This book was not for me, I tried several times to get past the first few chapters but just couldn't. Thanks to NetGalley for my copy of this book, this is my opinion not a reflection on the book.

3 stars - a bit all over the place, but entertaining enough

The author, who is quite obviously a fan of Douglas Adams's work, is presenting us with the light-hearted sci-fi story of Dungsten Crease (see what he did there? Almost like "Dent"), who gets himself into all sorts of intergalactic trouble.

The thing is - Dungsten is not just a human on Earth, he is actually a Shaper prototype, an engineered being able to manipulate space and time. His would-be purpose is creating interesting vacation spots for the high society of the galaxy.
But it has been decided that he needs to be "decomissioned" and it is a lucrative job this, with coveted rewards. So Dungsten finds himself as the target of an assasin. He also stumbles over the woman of his dreams, Kate. At the same time, all of a sudden his powers activate without him undertanding what is going on and he bifurcates into two separate strands of the story. Going forward, all sorts of shenanigans ensue, Dungsten has to learn to control his powers and of course the world needs some saving as well.

My two gripes with the book are that 1) there are quite a few typos (Kate is even called Jessica once) and the storytelling is at times really disjointed. Proper editing could have done wonders here... And 2) I was not a fan of this tired trope that the really totally average guy with few distinguishing features gets the brilliant, beautiful, courageous girl, and she is totally into him of course. There is not much character development to speak of, so we really don't know what is going on within Dungsten's and Kate's minds really, which would have added to the story - for me at least.

I did however like the quirky, absurd ideas the author came up with but they never reach that level of sheer bizarreness Adams is so well known for. Still, I did enjoy reading this one enough and don't feel like I wasted my time.

If you like Adams, just want some light, absurd sci-fi comedy without any darkness to it, this might work well for you!