Seven Letters

I’ve been a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fan since I was a little neurotic boy, so when I heard that Eoin Colfer had been tapped to extend the franchise, I was immediately interested.

I’m not a huge fan of the last couple of Hitchhiker books.  I thought they read like contractual obligations.  I was worried that AAT would turn out to be another forced, uninteresting book.

Well, it’s not uninteresting, and Colfer has a creepy ear for Adams’ literary voice.  He uncannily channels the original author’s prose with incredible precision.

And listening to the audiobook version, I loved hearing Simon Jones (who played Arthur Dent in the original radio and television shows) take on all the characters with gusto.

But I thought the book suffered from a couple of things.  They’re spoilers, so you’ll have to click through to read them.

First off: Random Dent is the most irritating character in the canon, and probably in most of anything written in the past few decades.  She pouts, moans, and grimaces through the entire book as a single characturiture, never changing moods, never giving us one sympathetic moment.  I grimaced anytime she opened her mouth.

Second: the Trillian/Wowbagger slash.  Where do I even begin?

• It was forced.  I never got a hint that they had any appeal to each other until they suddenly smooched.
• Wowbagger was a completely unsympathetic bastard until the kiss.  That’s okay, he was a funny unsympathetic bastard.  After the kiss, we were expected to view him in a positive, sympathetic light.  Inconsistent.
• Why is Trillian only defined by the men she does or doesn’t sleep with?  Can the lady please have more character, other than the token “Erm… she’s a reporter, too” angle? 
  
  I mean, first she’s with Zaphod, and that’s fine.  Arthur lusts after her, but she’s clearly not in his league.  Sexual frustration is a pillar of good, classic English science-fiction (something the writers of Doctor Who need to remember, but I digress).  Then, by some byzantine plot twist, she has Arthur’s child, and suddenly, she’s with Wowbagger.  Can’t she stand on her own two feet?

Those two points really killed the book for me.  It’s too bad, because between Simon Jones’ inspired reading and Eoin Colfer’s seance-like channeling of Douglas Adams, this could have been a real winner.