So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

Adams is clever an original, as always. There are plenty of good laughs in this book. It is good to see the return of earth to the universe for the first time since the opening chapter of the first book. Conrary to the movie, the earth remains destroyed for a good long while in the book serie.  It is good, in Fish, to see Arthur more richly developed.

For the first 80% of this book, I am struck by how this is Adam’s best literary quality so far. The story actually makes sense without any loss of humor or his usual twisted views on life, humanity and the universe. There is nice prose, realistic dialogue, richer character development.

Then Adams blows it by stepping out of voice for a two-page chapter, commenting on the book itself and the chapters to come. It just didn’t see the point in that, Doug. And shortly after, Arthur flies again. Arthur flies on earth, and his technique is simply ignoring of the laws of physics.

I can suspend a lot of disbelief in SciFi, and even more when it is satire. But this whole flying bit just pushes it too far for me.

If it were not for these two problems, I’d probably give the book 100, it is good for what it is; SciFi satire. So I’ll give it a 95.