And Another Thing...

If you felt that the fifth book didn't hold up to the usual standards of quality, then prepare for a surprise. This sixth installment manages to be worse. It needlessly continues the story in Mostly Harmless, is entirely derivative, rehashes old jokes, and tells us more about the Vogons than anyone should ever want to hear.
My advice is to re-read the first three books instead.

Colfer shocked me. His capture of the Adams voice was good and his grasp of the characters was even better. Granted at time I felt a bit like I was listening to an impressionist, but I never got overwhelmed by that. And I rarely if ever thought that a character was acting in an entirely unexpected way. Hitchhiker fans should feel safe to test these watersz. Some may object that it's an uncanny valley of similarity, but overall I felt that the spirit was there and rather enjoyed it.

Colfer is to be commended for attempting the impossible and pulling it off so well. He wrote a book which, by its style, certainly fits in with Adams's corpus, but which never gives the impression of trying to counterfeit him. Not quite as funny or heart-moving as some of the original Hitchhiker's books, it was nevertheless an enjoyable read.

I think if I had read this before Salmon of Doubt I might have been disappointed that it was not Adams himself. But Salmon, with its incompleteness and sudden ending, saddened me greatly and drove home that Adams is no more, so I was not expecting his exact voice in Another Thing.

A decent take on continuing the Hitchhiker's “trilogy,” but a bit too much fanservice and digression for my taste. In all likelihood it fits perfectly, and I'm just being snobby. The author manages to mimic Douglas Adams style fairly faithfully, but there are a few obvious instances where the author pokes his head in and throws things off just enough to remind you you're not dealing with the genuine article.

If you're a HHGTG fan, it's probably worth a read, if you're a purist, you're fooling yourself, and if you're not a fan, you probably won't see past the SEP field in the first place.