The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
By: Douglas Adams
Copyright: 1980
Portland House

5 Bookmarks out of 5

So, to be totally honest I have never read another book in the trilogy of five after Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I was pretty excited to see how Trillian, Zaphod, Ford, and Arthur resolve their travels across the galaxy. I was always pretty pumped to see if we ever do get to know what the ultimate question is to the life, the universe, and everything. I was excited to see that the second book was even better than the first one, believe it or not.

There are a lot of reasons behind why this book fared better than the first in the Hitchhiker's Guide saga. The primary reason behind this is because the second one feels like it actually has a plot that is being driving toward. The first book in the series seems a lot like many disjointed scenes placed together by Douglas Adams in order to see how funny he can be. However, in Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Adams attempts to further a major plot line that is introduced in the first book. Zaphod's brain has been altered by none other than himself and in the second book Zaphod begins to give in to his random thoughts that are apparently coming from his old self. Zaphod is driven along a wild ride to find out who the actual ruler of the universe is. This plot line, in of itself, is enough to make the reader turn from page to page rather than the humor in the first book.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are still plenty of funny parts to be found in this second book of the series. The jokes are still in the British sense, so I will say that if you don't like British humor, you still may not find this book very funny. All things considered, though, the reader feels much less like an outsider in this book. In the first book of the series, the reader is thrown into this crazy universe and spends much of the novel trying to play catch up. However, in the second book the reader is more at ease at how crazy the universe is and begins to accept any weird thing that might be happening in the plot. In this sense, the reader can certainly identify with the character of Arthur Dent and the books seem very bent on making the reader feel sympathetic towards him.

Probably the best part of Restaurant of the End of the Universe is the actual Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Now, I realize I'm not the smartest of people, but for some reason I always assumed this restaurant would be at a particular place rather than a particular time. The restaurant is actually stuck in a time-warp where guests can see the literal end of the universe and everything in it while eating a nice meal and listening to a band play. I have to admit, my imagination ran away with this concept and how absolutely cool it would be to eat at this restaurant. I wish that Adams had included a trip to the Big Bang Burger Bar so I could imagine what the beginning of the universe looked like as well.

Anyway you look at it, I found myself enjoying this book because the characters finally settled in to being themselves, Zaphod himself developed a great portion of his character, the plot had a reason, there were great imaginative scenes, and it still made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately for the my followers, you'll have to read for yourselves to find out what the ultimate question is and you'll also have to read to figure out who is actually ruling the universe. But as long as you understand Douglas Adams' style, you'll find the answer to these two problems to be quite satisfactory.