When we last left our "intrepid" "heroes" - Arthur Dent, Trillian Astra, Ford Prefect and Arthur and Trillian's daughter Random Dent - they were being destroyed by Grebulons on the last version of Earth still extant in the Multiverse, lured there by the evil Vogon-owned Mark II version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They have not suffered, however; the bird-shaped, psychic, time-travelling Guide has plugged their minds into itself, allowing each to live out an entire lifetime in the seconds they have left in the real Universe. But now the Guide's batteries are running flat and it's time to go back to inevitable doom. Or is it? In what seems to be becoming a habit, Zaphod Beeblebrox arrives in the Heart of Gold to save them, though that salvation is short lived and they soon need rescuing by a familiar surly immortal. While tensions between and within our protagonists mount, we soon discover that - despite the lack of Earths - it seems there are still surviving human beings - and the Vogons already know about them...
Yes, today I finally finished Eoin Colfer's Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy sequel, And Another Thing..., which follows on from the end of Mostly Harmless. It's left me feeling pretty ambivalent, to tell the truth.
For one thing, it feels like fan fiction. Well written, sometimes funny, and novel-length fan fiction, I grant you; but it's still a sequel to a much loved cult series of books, radio programmes, television series and feature films, and as such there's a ring of the "why bothers" about it. Adams himself joked that he'd killed off all the characters at the end of Mostly Harmless so he'd know where to find them all when he wrote a sequel, but a sequel never seemed as much on his mind as further alternate versions of the main story (many of the new ideas in the surprisingly good 2005 Hollywood treatment were his).
Mostly Harmless itself, published eight years after the other four books, shares quite a bit in common with And Another Thing...: it's a direct sequel picking up from what seemed a perfectly good ending in the previous book; it has more-or-less a single storyline, rather than being a string of disparate sequences; it develops a small number of ideas further rather than throwing a hundred ideas at the reader for as long as they're funny; and most fans of the series won't like it. (Now I think of it, almost all of those things could also be said of volume four, So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, but everyone likes that one.) So it seems a bit unfair of me to be so indifferent to Colfer's effort, especially when - at age 13 - Mostly Harmless was the first hardcover novel I ever bought, almost as soon as it was released, and devoured on the car trip back from somewhere with a bigger book store than my home town.
If I'm honest, that emotional connection to the last of Adams' books in the series - it was the first thing of any kind I ever knew and cared about before it existed, back in the days before the Internet made waiting for things that don't yet exist almost inevitable - is probably a large part of why I like it so much more than most fans, but I guess it's also why I wanted to give Colfer a chance. But the deck is stacked against him, not least because he loves the series himself. References to the originals drip from every paragraph; hardly a single Guide entry in the novel doesn't use a planet, species or character name invented by Adams, and there are precious few characters in the book who we've not met before, with only one - the fairly unlikeable Hillman Hunter, nominally the man in charge of the last human settlement in the Galaxy - getting much fleshing out.
A notable absence, though, is Ford. He's hardly in it. Whole scenes go past in which he is in attendance but has no input. While I appreciate that describing Ford Prefect as a protagonist is like calling Peter Garret a champion of the environment, he's always been my favourite character, so having him around but doing nothing is much worse than his absence in So Long. (His return in Mostly Harmless was yet another reason I enjoyed it.) There's also relatively little for Arthur to do, although he gets a fair bit of moping in, almost as though he hadn't spent the previous novel dealing with what he'd lost in the one before that. Zaphod dominates the narrative, though for some reason without one of his heads (the smarter one, in fact, though there was never any indication that he had two personalities previously), though Trillian, Random and a couple of previously minor characters from the series also feature heavily.
No-one would argue, I think, that Adams was a master of plot or characterisation; it was his prose and his ideas and his wit that made him wonderful. Yet his successor is Eoin Colfer, whose prose is witty, whose jokes are (mostly) funny, and whose plotting is pretty good. I'm not sure he was the best man for this job, but then I'm not sure this was a job that needed doing, and in the end I think I can safely say that while I enjoyed And Another Thing... - enough that I'd give Colfer's other books a go - it's not all I hoped it might be.
Showing posts with label And Another Thing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label And Another Thing. Show all posts
Jews With Swords
A thousand years ago in the Caucasus, two "gentlemen of the road" - the giant Abyssinian warrior and shatranj player Amram and the gaunt Frankish physician Zelikman - have just pulled off their usual con, a staged duel. Before they can collect their ill-gotten gains, fate brings to them a young boy, last survivor of a slaughtered noble family, and they are quickly swept up into pursuits far more noble than those to which they are accustomed.
Today, as Melbourne sweltered in 45 degree heat, I finished my first book of 2010, Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, including the afterword in which Chabon reveals its original working title, Jews With Swords. It's one of the most exciting books I've read in ages, and perhaps the most fun; a real adventure novel, short (under 200 pages) and pacey. This may well be partly due to the novel's serialised origin, but I think it's just as much to do with Chabon truly embracing the genre he has chosen.
This isn't just a swords and sandals adventure romp, though; it's placed in a real historical context, around 950 AD, and the situations and nations in the book are all based on the real world. There's no evil wizard, no bizarre monsters, but they're redundant when Chabon is able to paint just as vividly the contemporary wonders of war elephants, the marauding Rus, and the bizarre weapons of his protagonists (Amram carries a rune-covered northern axe, while Zelikman's blade is custom-made and resembles nothing so much as a giant needle). The characters are instantly likeable and have a depth perhaps surprising to those not familiar with the genre, but above all it's the wit and intelligence with which the prose drips that makes this such an enjoyable read.
It's only the second novel of Chabon's I've read, and it was a world away from The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. If Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books are anything like this, I'll have to check them out too, though I can't help but think Chabon's novel is a greatly improved version, not just informed by his predecessors, but building on them and adding in his own particular form of literary genius. He dedicates the book to Michael Moorcock, another author whose work I have heard much about but have read little; indeed, my only experience of him is Stormbringer, one of his earliest novels featuring his most famous creation, Elric of Melniboné. I need to read more of him, too.
I know I've still to catch up with the last of the Bunch of Authors books - I will get around to it. I suppose now, though, I'll have to finish And Another Thing; if it sounds like I consider that a chore, well, that's not quite how I feel, but it isn't quite the glorious fun I was hoping for either. There are some nice ideas in it, though, and the characters, while they don't quite feel like the Adams originals, are at least going somewhere new, though there's far less of Ford than I'd like. Still half a novel to go, though, so who knows? I do feel that I'm reading for about half a dozen people though, since several of my friends can't bring themselves to read it and are waiting for my report from the field...
Today, as Melbourne sweltered in 45 degree heat, I finished my first book of 2010, Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, including the afterword in which Chabon reveals its original working title, Jews With Swords. It's one of the most exciting books I've read in ages, and perhaps the most fun; a real adventure novel, short (under 200 pages) and pacey. This may well be partly due to the novel's serialised origin, but I think it's just as much to do with Chabon truly embracing the genre he has chosen.
This isn't just a swords and sandals adventure romp, though; it's placed in a real historical context, around 950 AD, and the situations and nations in the book are all based on the real world. There's no evil wizard, no bizarre monsters, but they're redundant when Chabon is able to paint just as vividly the contemporary wonders of war elephants, the marauding Rus, and the bizarre weapons of his protagonists (Amram carries a rune-covered northern axe, while Zelikman's blade is custom-made and resembles nothing so much as a giant needle). The characters are instantly likeable and have a depth perhaps surprising to those not familiar with the genre, but above all it's the wit and intelligence with which the prose drips that makes this such an enjoyable read.
It's only the second novel of Chabon's I've read, and it was a world away from The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. If Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books are anything like this, I'll have to check them out too, though I can't help but think Chabon's novel is a greatly improved version, not just informed by his predecessors, but building on them and adding in his own particular form of literary genius. He dedicates the book to Michael Moorcock, another author whose work I have heard much about but have read little; indeed, my only experience of him is Stormbringer, one of his earliest novels featuring his most famous creation, Elric of Melniboné. I need to read more of him, too.
I know I've still to catch up with the last of the Bunch of Authors books - I will get around to it. I suppose now, though, I'll have to finish And Another Thing; if it sounds like I consider that a chore, well, that's not quite how I feel, but it isn't quite the glorious fun I was hoping for either. There are some nice ideas in it, though, and the characters, while they don't quite feel like the Adams originals, are at least going somewhere new, though there's far less of Ford than I'd like. Still half a novel to go, though, so who knows? I do feel that I'm reading for about half a dozen people though, since several of my friends can't bring themselves to read it and are waiting for my report from the field...
"and she threw the book at me"
It's done! I just finished The Cleft, and it was pretty good. I know I've not yet made good on my promise to catch up on the full blog entries, but I have at least come to the end of the Bunch of Authors quest.
Well...the end for now. I intend to keep reading, and to keep blogging about what I read. (I'll probably finish And Another Thing... for starters.)
Thanks to anyone who may have joined me, however briefly, on my journey. It will continue. And I will write up the last four books soon!
Well...the end for now. I intend to keep reading, and to keep blogging about what I read. (I'll probably finish And Another Thing... for starters.)
Thanks to anyone who may have joined me, however briefly, on my journey. It will continue. And I will write up the last four books soon!
The Rapid Update
Okay, it's been way too long, but I've just arrived back home after three weeks in the US, and I need to let you know that I finished The English Patient and I'm about two-thirds of the way through The Cleft. I was somewhat distracted by Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing, the sixth Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy novel, but I abandoned it halfway through to get back on track.
Over the next few days, as I recover from jet-lag and see James Cameron's Avatar, I'll endeavour to complete my backlog of posts - I still owe you The Blind Assassin, Tempest-Tost and The English Patient. But at least I'm on target to finish the list by year's end.
Over the next few days, as I recover from jet-lag and see James Cameron's Avatar, I'll endeavour to complete my backlog of posts - I still owe you The Blind Assassin, Tempest-Tost and The English Patient. But at least I'm on target to finish the list by year's end.
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