I combined my review for all of the Hitchhiker books in to one post. It just felt easier that way.

You can read the review here:

*****Darling & Co.*****

This is Douglas Adam's final episode of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it's as funny and clever as ever.

Great finish to an original sci-fi classic series.

بازخوانی دوم

This starts really well: Ford Prefect deals a cynical blow to insurance companies, revenue & income, and other generally annoying institutions such as fools and bad news, when gradually the plot itself gets caught in a slow-motion time warp - or so it felt.

My eye-lids got unusually heavy despite a leisurely catch-up with Arthur Dent, and the introduction of infinite possibilities (or was it probabilities?), and various programming teasers. The middle of the book was tedious. I may, of course, have missed some mind-blowing references which would explain this not-so-positive perception.

The pace picks up at the end of the book (a Good Thing for Bob's sake!), and everything goes back to being as it always was or should have been – the perfect ending for this utterly bonkers trilogy of five.

I did it! I finished an actual series of more than four books in slightly over a year. I call that a win.

I do know that "finished" is debatable because of And Another Thing..., the official sixth book by Eoin Colfer and published 8 years after Douglas Adams's death, but I'm not sure how to approach that one right now. I feel like I just want to sit with this one for a bit. And there's definitely a lot to sit with.

For starters, there's the whole Trillian/Tricia thing. That wasn't at all what I expected, especially with Random. The alternating parallel universe genre is interesting to me, and I hadn't really realized it even was a (subgenre of a sub-) genre until recently. I'm very interested in seeing how far different authors can take the "what if" but keep the character. I don't know how I feel about the way Adams does this, exactly. If there's a parallel Tricia, shouldn't there be a parallel Arthur as well? Is that important?

I'm not sure if I'm a fan of how much the later two books derailed from the plot of the first three, especially in trying to find the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. However, I did appreciate the return to space travel and full-on randomness that we returned to in this one. I also liked how much of the story was from Ford's perspective. Learning about the inner workings of the Guide was interesting, and having his narration was a lot of fun. I also appreciated that we had Tricia and Ford's narration for about a quarter of the book before meeting Arthur again. The almost full omniscience of the narration one thing I've enjoyed a lot with this series. And Ford definitely stepped up in this one. Actually, I don't remember if there's been a lot of Ford POV in previous books. But honestly, I feel like this is kind of similar to why I liked The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, because there was a lot of Zaphod POV on a similar discovery.

I do think that Mostly Harmless is my second favorite in the series after The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It was a lot of fun to just roll with. I am unsure about continuing with And Another Thing... for a few different reasons. The biggest one is that, even though it is considered the official sixth book, it was not written by the original author, and I don't know how to feel about that. It seems like a sort of fanfiction gimmick, especially in light of things like Cursed Child. At the same time, Douglas Adams also may not have meant to end the series where he did (I looked up some stuff about Colfer's addition to the series). And I'm not sure how I feel about that ending. In some ways, I kind of like the ambiguity of it, and it feels like continuing the series at this point is kind of forced, as in a video game where you can just keep regenerating without consequences. On the other hand, I still feel as if there are a few things that do need to be wrapped up, especially in terms of Ford and the Vogons. I would hope that Colfer does address these things in a way that does finalize the story, but again I'm honestly not sure whether I want to know.

بیشترش چیز خاصی نبود!

Douglas Adams has always had such a massive influence on my writing. I don’t think there’s any other author out there who does madcap, irreverent and downright silly as well as he does.

This book, the fifth in the series, continues the craziness of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Trillion, but with the usual unexpected twists and turns, ranging from random daughters (literally called Random) to multi-universes and holy sandwich makers. Blissfully bonkers stuff.

This was a shitshow. I have read that Adams admitted this was a bleak and bad book because he was going through some stuff in his personal life and it reflected on the last book.

It was a lazily constructed ending of a series in my opinion.

Yes, it is in a way absurd and in tone with the book – I certainly didn’t expect them to all have long and happy lives on their planets of birth with 3 children, a house, and a porch swing.
Yes, most answers to life’s questions in the book are ridiculous and making fun of any sort of search for meaning.

But that doesn't mean that I don't have the right to dislike this part of the series.

It was bad and rushed. The ending happens in like a few pages, and I could see that the author might have had ideas for a different ending but opted for this one. The irony was there, and that was about the only good part of this book.

The characters didn’t even feel real, more like caricatures of themselves. The overall tone of this book is hopeless.  I never got the idea that Trillian wanted a child so why the fuck did he give her one when she clearly doesn’t give a shit about the child? Only so that the plot somehow could pull Arthur into it all.

Even the humor wasn't there, ok, there were maybe a few good parts with his characteristic humor but the rest was boring to go through.

Final thoughts: If you set your bar low then maybe read this book, as for me this was so unsatisfying I will never get over that.
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More like mostly disappointing. Rtc.

Bir hikayenin daha sonuna geldik.

Serinin önceki kitaplarını göme göme finale kadar geldim. Buruk ama fena olmayan bir sonla iyi kötü bağlamış Douglas Adams.

Bu serinin her yeri açıklarla dolu. Biraz olayların akışına ve anlatıma kendinizi kaptırıp ne neydi diye fazla düşünmemeniz gerekiyor. Maalesef bu konuda ilk kitaptan sonra sürekli eksikti serimiz. Yani olaylar ilk kitapta çok iyi yerlere gidebilirdi. Merak uyandırdı ama beklenen olmadı. Tadı damağımızda kaldı. Sonraki kitaplar hikaye düştü düştü, perişan oldu.

Overrated bir seriyle karşı karşıyayız. Sonuç olarak ilk kitabın ekmeğini yemiş, bir radyo programı olarak başlayan hikaye yapımcıların yazarı zorlamasıyla çalakalem bir hale gelmiş.

Bu seri ülkemizde faaliyet gösteren ekşi sözlüğe de ilham olmuş. Buradaki "otostopçunun galaksi rehberi" pek çok açıdan sözlüğe benziyor farkettiyseniz.

Bu kitaba özel bir soru soracağım." eee marvin? zaphod??"

Zorladım kendimi bitirdim. Bir daha okur muyum. Kısa vadede hayır. Belki birkaç sene sonra bakabilirim tekrar.

Last book, here we go! Honestly the first three were so good and this is just mediocre.

I did end up liking this more the the last fish one. Still got lukewarm feelings for the series tough. They are entertaining, sure but don't see why is has such massive fan base.