Friday, May 5, 2017

Review: Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams

Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
My rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The third installment in the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series continued the very good storytelling of the previous installment, but unfortunately regressed in humor to that of the original installment. Bringing into the story more time travel to go along with space travel, Adams brings back characters and old familiar location back to create an entertaining story.

Beginning with Arthur Dent on 2 million B.C. Earth reconnecting with Ford after several years apart, the two compare notes before seeing a sofa slowly moving across a field. After catching it, they're transported to Lord's just before England wins The Ashes and meeting up with Slartibartfast then watch as a spaceship lands and white robots that look like cricket players charge into the celebrating crowd and take The Ashes. Arthur and Ford then learn about the Krikkit, the great Krikkit War, and the Wikkit Gate to keep them locked away in time until the universe ended. Suddenly racing around the galaxy, always too late, to stop the Krikkit's robot army from getting component of the Wikkit Key. After one failed attempt, they meet up with Trillian who's left a lethargic Zaphod only to be reunited when the robots steal the drive of the Heart of Gold. They desperately travel to the planet Krikkit in which Trillian figures things out and saves the Universe from destruction, only for Arthur to almost destroy it when he lives out his dream to bowl at Lords.

Life, the Universe, and Everything has a lot of action and interesting adventures for Arthur and Ford with only minimal participation by Trillian, Zaphod, and Marvin. Even though Trillian is the character that connects the dots even though she came into the adventure late, Adams gives the reader all the clues to bring about a fantastic ending. The only downside to this story is that the humor doesn't measure up to Restaurant and is more in line with Hitchhiker.

While I am giving Life, the Universe, and Everything the same rating as Restaurant, right now this is my second favorite installment of Adams' series given the the humor for the former is better than this one. If the humor had been on the same level then this story would have easily been 4 stars.

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