The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy review – flimsy extravaganza needs deeper thought

The madcap sci-fi tale is retold on a lavish scale, complete with in-show merch, but it never really blasts off

The Little Mermaid review – underwater wonders cast a spell in mid-air

A fresh telling of Hans Christian Andersen’s story deploys circus skills and inventive design to create a memorable merworld

Luigi: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson review – sympathy for a devil?

This nebulous study of Luigi Mangione veers close to romanticising him as a latter-day Robin Hood

The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly review – horror, humanity and Dr Asperger

The reader grapples with fascism and complicity through the eyes of a mute autistic girl being treated during the second world war

Service by John Tottenham review – comic confessions of a grumpy bookseller

Working in a bookshop while failing to write a novel, the narrator admits to being a ‘living cliche’ in this bitter black comedy

Slow Poison by Mahmood Mamdani review – can you really rehabilitate Idi Amin?

The anthropologist and father of New York’s mayor-elect offers a revisionist view of modern Ugandan history

The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgård review – can this sprawling epic deliver on its promise?

In the fourth volume of the occult Morning Star cycle, a Faustian pact haunts a misanthropic artist who finds miraculous success

Crick: A Mind in Motion by Matthew Cobb review – the charismatic philanderer who changed science

Genius and arrogance play leading roles in a new biography of the man who helped uncover the structure of DNA

The Firework-Maker’s Daughter review – Philip Pullman’s fairytale is explosive fun

This spellbinding adaptation uses a bulging dramatic toolbox of clever effects and manages to be both epic and intimate

Primitive War review – it’s Green Berets vs dinosaurs in cheerfully cheesy Vietnam war gorefest

Set to an on-the-nose soundtrack of Creedence Clearwater, an elite squad of soldiers are suitably unprepared for their large-toothed assailants in this jungle thriller

Holbein: Renaissance Master by Elizabeth Goldring review – a magnificent portrait of the artist

The first scholarly biography in more than 100 years of the man who immortalised the Tudor court does not disappoint

Children and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

The return of Charlie and Lola; the second lives of trees; the dangers of time travel; a YA Bluebeard retelling and more

Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck review – a kaleidoscopic study of transience

A collection of columns by the German Booker winner reveals a keen eye for the details that mark the passing of time

Liars by Sarah Manguso audiobook review – livid tale of marriage gone awry

Rebecca Lowman narrates a superb, claustrophobia-inducing plunge into a relationship descending from bad to worse

The Hiding Place by Kate Mildenhall review – an edge-of-your-seat thriller that skewers the middle class

A group of friends buy an abandoned mining town in this satisfying crime novel with a satirical twist