Reviews

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

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stepriot's review

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5.0

I don't recall ever reading a more appropriate ending for a series.

teokajlibroj's review against another edition

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2.0

I've just finished reading Mostly Harmless and I'm stunned. Stunned . . . at how bad it was. It barely resembles the other books in the series. The most obvious flaw is that it isn't funny. There is almost no clever parts, absurdity or laugh out loud moments. In fact, it hardly even tries to be funny.

Also out of sync with the series is that this book has a plot. However, the plot is awful and miserable. Bad things happen to the characters for no reason, no logic and without being resolved. While the earlier books depicted the universe as a joke we could all laugh at, this book depicts the universe as being cold, empty and meaningless.

Unlike the previous books, the characters are faced with serious problems that they are genuinely worried about. This time they don't laugh them off or get rescued in a comical manner. They merely bounce from one miserable problem to another. There is no funny/silly science but rather confusing stuff about time travel and parallel universes which made a complete mess of the plot.

It completely overwrites everything that happened in the previous books. Most of the characters are gone or changed. I was particularly annoyed at the random, pointless and unexplained disappearance of Fenchurch. The entire last book was based on her so why write her out in less than a sentence?

What was with the inclusion of the daughter? She seemed a pretty pointless character. The ending was atrocious and Adams could have done so much better. Mostly Harmless is a strangely unhappy book that doesn't fit in the Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy Series.

pkiwi's review

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3.0

For me, the least interesting book of the series. I liked many individual things -

Spoiler

Colin the happy robot puppy, Arthur the sandwich master, Ford's ploy to get on the alien spaceship, among other things

- but overall, many things felt forced, out of the blue or just really confusing. And that's saying something for a series which is premised on unpredictable, random stuff.

Spoiler

And I'd actually really come to like Fenchurch over the course of the last book, so her rude disappearance probably meant I was never really going to like this book anyway...

alguienmescucha's review

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4.0

Me gustó toda la serie, pero a medida que fue avanzando este libro, era más confuso y al azar que nunca. Hay cosas que definitivamente quedan abiertas, y cosas que, al ser el último libro, nunca se van a resolver. Pero bueno, hay que darle unos puntitos por la genialidad del autor, y la originalidad de la historia.

doctorw0rm's review against another edition

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3.25

was this supposed to be the last book in the series?? if so then what a bummer. i get the feeling that it wasn’t supposed to be, though, since this book seemed to be setting up plot lines. now i feel like i have to read the eoin colfer book, which could take a while bc i can’t find a free audiobook of it anywhere ugh. oh well.