Early Riser - Jasper Fforde

   2018; 400 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Dystopian Fantasy, Alternate History.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    It’s late autumn in Wales, and we all know what that means, right?

 

    Yep, it’s time to eat two or three times as much as we normally do, and hopefully gain twenty, thirty and if we’re lucky, maybe even forty pounds in a hurry.

 

    Because Winter is fast approaching, and come Slumberdown, the day we start our hibernation, we want to be as heavy as possible.  Just like the bears, we'll go to sleep, not wake up until Springrise, and all that extra poundage will keep us nourished in between.  “Slim and trim” is a fatal condition for hibernators.

 

    That’s the routine for most of the population.  But a few people have to stay awake, both to protect those hibernating and to fix anything that might break down.  Wintertime in Wales, and many other places, is exceptionally harsh.

 

    Charlie Worthing has just volunteered for the Winter Consul Services, those guardians of the deep sleep.  He has a lot to learn, not much time to do it, and above all, get rid of his dreams.

 

    Because dreaming can be a terminal condition.

 

What’s To Like...

    Every Jasper Fforde novel I’ve read has fantastic worldbuilding, and Early Riser is no exception.  Presenting a plausible scenario of modern-day civilization dealing with fantasy creatures during a rip-snorting Ice Age is no easy task, but Fforde handles it deftly.  The entire story is set in Wales, mostly in a place called the Gower Peninsula, which is both real and scenic.  It is told in the first-person POV, that of the protagonist, Charlie.

 

    There’s a handy schematic of a dormitorium (a what?) which reminded me of the underground structures in Hugh Howey’s Silo series, except here they are aboveground.  The text overflows with wit, a Fforde staple, and there are lots of neat weapons (most of which go “Whump”), and critters (most of which go “Chomp”) to meet and give a proper amount of respect to.

 

    The tale is written in English, Jasper Fforde’s mother tongue, so American readers may have to suss out the meaning of some weird phrases such as “pumping out the zeds”, “come a cropper”, and “car park”.  But that’s a fun task.  Acronym-lovers will also be kept entertained, and any when’s the last time you read a tale where being fat is admirable and being thin is reprehensible?

 

Charlie and the reader both have lots of stuff to figure out, including:

    a.) What is Project Lazarus?

    b.) Who is Kiki, and why does he/she need the cylinder?

    c.) Is there a better alternative to the dream-quelling drug called “Morphenox”?

    d.) What’s so special about dreams involving blue Buicks, oak trees, severed hands, and being buried alive?

 

    There are some neat music references along the way: Tom Jones (well, he’s Welsh, so this is no surprise), Bonzo Dog Band, Mott The Hoople, The Dark Side of the Moon, Ziggy Stardust, Mott The Hoople (again!), Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" album, Val Doonican (who?), and Richard Stilgoe (who?  Wiki him).  The text is very clean – only 9 cusswords in the first hundred-pages, and limited to scatological and afterworld references, plus the pseudo cuss-phrase “Gronk’s dung in a piss-pot” which made me chuckle.

 

    Like Charlies, you may find yourself wandering around in a fog while reading the first 300 pages of Early Riser, but if you persevere, you’ll be rewarded with a spectacular 100-page ending, full of lots of excitement and full explanations for what’s going on and why.  Early Riser is a rare standalone novel by Jasper Fforde, and is not set in the worlds of any of his previous series.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Come a cropper (n., phrase) : to fall heavily (a Britishism).

Others: Snaffle (v., also a Britishism).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 928 ratings and 262 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.87/5 based on 13,404 ratings and 2,204 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “The enemy aren’t the Villains, womads, scavengers, insomniacs, Ice-Hermits, Megafauna, nightwalkers, hiburnal rodents or flesh-eating cold slime — it’s the Winter.  To survive, you need to respect her first.  What do you need to do?”

    “Respect the Winter.”  I paused.  “Sir?”

    “Yes?”

    “What’s flesh-eating cold slime?”

    “It’s probably best not to think about that.”  (pg. 28)

 

    “Did you do any dreaming on your four-week sojourn to the dark side?”

    “No, ma’am.”

    “Good,” she said.  “The one thing I loathe more than winsomniacs is dreamers.  Feet on the ground, head out of the clouds.  Agree?”

    “Yes, ma’am.”

    “I don’t like subordinates always agreeing,” she said.  “Sycophants have no place in my department.  You’re to speak your mind when the opportunity calls for it.”

    “How will I know when that is?”

    “I shall inform you.”  (pg. 216)

 

“I hope the Gronk lays eggs in your brain, Mrs. Nesbit!”  (pg. 107)

    There are some nits to pick, but no show-stoppers.

 

    The first 3/4 of the book is not only confusing, it is also slow.  Charlie wanders around, trying unsuccessfully to make sense of what's real and what’s a dream, and what's happening to the various “non-productives” of the not-asleep society, namely the nightwalkers, winsomniacs, and Villains.  There’s also the matter of determining whether Gronks are real; a bet is riding on that.

 

    The “advertisements” at the end of the book, another Jasper Fforde staple, were great, and the footnotes were okay (although not on a par with Discworld footnotes in wittiness), but the abstracts at the start of every chapter didn’t do anything for me.  There were lots of chapters, but no list of them with their page numbers at the beginning of the book, so back-referencing was a pain.  But I read the hardcover edition, and this may not be true of the e-book version.

 

    Lastly, and leastly, the Wikipedia article on Jasper Fforde is in desperate need of updating.

 

    That's enough of the quibbling.  In the “Acknowledgements” section at the end of the book, Jasper Fforde mentions his “creative hiatus of 2014-2016”.  Early Riser was his first published book after that three-year gap, and maybe we should cut him a little slack.  To be clear, this isn’t a case of Early Riser being a poor book, it’s a case of his earlier books, particularly his Thursday Next series, being JUST. SO. GOOD. 

 

    7½ Stars.  One last thing to note, courtesy of Wikipedia:

 

    “The novel is notable because Fforde never uses a gender descriptive pronoun for the protagonist Charlie Worthing, referring to Charlie variously as they/them, I/me, and as simply 'Charlie'.”

 

    Incredible.  Only an exceptionally-skilled author could pull this off, and I am in awe that Jasper Fforde could do this.