And Another Thing… is the official sequel to Douglas Adams‘ Hitchhiker’s Guide “trilogy in five parts” written by Eoin Colfer.

Plot:
When last we left Arthur Dent, Trillian, their daughter Random and Ford Prefect, they were on Earth and about to be blown up in all dimensions and parallel universes and everywhere with the help of a multi-dimensional Hitchhiker’s Guide.
But since Random was the secondary master of the H2G2II, he traps them in a virtual reality so they can live out their lifes before they’re blown up. When its batteries start to fail, all of them come together and try to escape – which they’re ultimately able to with the help of Zaphod Beeblebrox and Wowbagger, The Infinitely Prolonged.

Eoin Colfer did a good job writing this sequel. Though he doesn’t reach quite the heights Adams reached, And Another Thing… is a good read. Colfer makes the book his own, instead of trying to be Douglas Adams, which is, in my opinion, the only way to go successfully about it.

AAT… was a little uneven. It starts out very humourous but the funny parts get fewer and farer in between the further along you get into the story. But I didn’t mind. The story is bizarre enough to carry the Hitchhiker feel without constant jokes.

But as I said before, this book is definitely Colfer’s book and not the book Adams would have written if he was still alive. Stylistically it’s different, of course, though it gives a lot of little nods of appreciation to Adams. (Sometimes that works, sometimes not so much.) There’s much more text from the H2G2 than there was in the original.

The important part was that Colfer captured the characters. That way, you feel right at home with them and the story.

Summarising, it’s a very entertaining read, not only for fans of the series. And I don’t think that fans could have asked for much more and reasonably expect it to come true. Though it’s not the best H2G2 book ever written, it is good.