My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
The fifth and penultimate installment of the Hitchhiker's series had an interesting premise and sadly poor execution, which almost seems to sum up my overall thoughts on the entire series.
The story begins and ends on Earth, not the first one nor the second but another one, with reporter Tricia McMillan wishing she had joined Zaphod seventeen years before. Meanwhile Arthur Dent is hitchhiking around the Universe looking for an Earth to settle down on, if he can get the dimension right, while finding out that Trillian is a reporter for an inter-dimension & multi-time period news channel. And Ford Prefect goes to the Guide's headquarters and finds out it's been taken over by a corporate giant that has developed a frighteningly new version of the Guide and mails it to Arthur just before his escape. Ultimately all these treads end on Tricia's Earth through strange twist that might appear to be Random, but are a result of a bureaucratic need to check a box.
Throughout the entire story, Adams creates great situations and locations that seem to be the start of a story in themselves only to then quickly end them in an attempt to link them to another or each other like in the end of the book. However, this just resulted in making the reader think "this story could be great if..." for over half the story and wish some characters had been around longer or even appear. So much promise, but nothing to show for it.
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