​Put your towels at half-mast, Douglas Adams fans -- the unnecessary, unwanted "conclusion" to the now six-part Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer, is out today, and, well... it's just depressing, is all. Most reviews have called the book "mostly harmless," which is to say boring and forgettable, which I would contend is the last thing a Hitchhiker book should be. The evidence backs this up, as io9 posted this snippet:

Guide Note: The notion that religions can be useful tools for keeping the rich rich and the poor abject has been around since shortly after the dawn of time, when a recently evolved bipedal frogget managed to convince all the other froggets in the marsh that their fates were governed by the almighty Lily Pad who would only agree to watch over their pond and keep it safe from gunner pike if an offering of flies and small reptiles was heaped upon it every second Friday. This worked for almost two years, until one of the reptile offerings proved to be slightly less than dead and proceeded to eat the gluttonized bipedal frogget followed by the almighty Lily Pad. The frogget community celebrated their freedom from the yoke of religion with an all-night rave party and hallucinogenic dock leaves. Unfortunately they celebrated a little loudly and were massacred by a gunner pike who for some reason hadn't noticed this little pond before.

Ugh. That is clearly a boring person trying to write like Douglas Adams. It's not particularly clever, it's not funny, and it's trying way to hard to be wacky. I repeat, ugh.

Topless Robot is of the opinion that this book is a cash grab by the late Douglas Adams' wife, that Douglas Adams was so individual a writer that no one could or should try to replicate him, and that And Another Thing should be avoided at all costs. If there was a way to not buy the book any harder, I would do that. Maybe I can demand a refund for it from a bookstore just by virtue of its existence.