Thursday Next - First Among Sequels - Jasper Fforde

2007; 362 pages. #5 in the Thursday Next series (or #6, if you count "The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco"). Genre : Fictional Book-Jumping. Overall Rating : 9*/10.

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It's been 14 years since the events in Something Rotten. Thursday Next is now ostensibly living a quiet life with hubby Landen and three kids (Friday, Tuesday, and Jenny). She's working for a carpet company, but the carpet company is a front for the officially disbanded SpecOps, and SpecOps is a front for Thursday's job with Jurisfiction.

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Trouble is a-brewin'. There's a Stupidity Surplus in England and Reading Rates are down. Cheese-smuggling is rampant and the Minotaur is still on the loose. The Hades family is back in action, as is Goliath Corp. Not only is The End Of Time rapidly approaching, but what they do to Pride And Prejudice is absolutely intolerable.

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What's To Like...

It's vintage Fforde - lots of threads and lots of wit. There are multiple Thursdays, multiple Fridays, multiple timelines, and lots of books-jumping. Fforde teases you with oodles of plot detail tidbits, and you have to figure out whether they're red herrings, MacGuffins, loose ends, or integral parts of one of the plotlines. There's some of each.

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Some old friends are back. Uncle Mycroft has died, but his ghost still putters around in the workshop. Pickwick has lost all her feathers and needs a knitted sweater. Even the Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire shows up.

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The book gets off to a slow start. Fforde spends a lot of time with the back-story, especially explaining how all the SpecOps and Jurisfiction departments are set up. After a hundred pages, I was beginning to wonder when the action would begin. I shouldn't've worried. The last 250 pages are fantastic.

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Kewl New Words...

Marram : a type of grass usually found on beaches. Profligate : wildly extravagant. Duvet : a soft quilt, usually filled with down. Privet : a European shrub, commonly used to make hedgerows.

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Excerpts...

"Splendid! I just had an idea for a cheap form of power : by bringing pasta and antipasta together, we could be looking at the utter annihilation of ravioli and the liberation of vast quantities of energy. I safely predict that an average-size cannelloni would be able to power Swindon for over a year. Mind you, I could be wrong." (pg. 18)

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"...and the first classic to be turned into a reality book show?"

"Pride and Prejudice, announced Yogert proudly. "It will be renamed The Bennets and will be serialized live in your household copy the day after tomorrow. Set in starchy early-nineteenth-century England, the series will feature Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters being given tasks and then voted out of the house one by one, with the winner going on to feature in Northanger Abbey, which itself will be the subject of more 'readeractive' changes." (pg. 272-73)

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Paragraph Lost...

This was a delightful read, so it rates Nine Stars. First Among Sequels ends by setting up the next book, which is titled "One of our Thursdays is Missing".

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My only concern is whether Fforde's getting burnt out on the Thursday Next tales. This book came out in 2007. He's promised us at least one more book in the "Nursery Crime" series; and his most-recent offering is Shades Of Grey, the first story in a new trilogy. Will he run out of new twists in the book-jumping theme? Is he looking for novel challenges? Oh well. Even if it ends with the next installment, it's been fun following Thursday's exploits.

Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde

2004; 383 pages. But read the 'Credits' page too. Book #4 in the Thursday Next series. Genre : Alternate Timeline. Overall Rating : A+.

   .Set two years after the previous book, Thursday returns to the "real" world with her toddler son, Friday, in tow; so that she can concentrate on getting her husband uneradicated.
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    Fforde once again interweaves a dizzying number of plots. Yorrick Kaine is chancellor of England and working hard to become its absolute dictator. An assassin is trying to kill Thursday. There's a professional croquet game that has to be won against overwhelming odds, and a Shakespeare-clone to locate so that the Bard's plays can be untangled. A wave of anti-Danishism is sweeping the country, and Goliath Corp. has inexplicably switched to "Faith-Based Corporate Management". Then there's the small matter of saving the world from Armageddon.

.What's To Like...
    Everything. The plot's fast-paced and the writing is witty. Mycroft Next is back. Pickwick the dodo is raising her son. Otto von Bismarck is wooing Thursday's mom; and Hamlet and Emma Hamilton (who?) behave similarly, after an initial bout of mamihlapinatapai (what?). Fforde has Friday Next speaking in Lorem Ipsum (eh?), which is a nice touch. The penultimate duel between Yorrick and the Cheshire Cat is outstanding.

  .Finally, there's the ultimate ending to this 4-book series itself. (*) Clever, unexpected, and touching. Something Rotten could serve as a textbook example of how to perfectly wrap up a series. What more can you ask for?

You're gushing. Isn't there anything wrong with Something Rotten?
    I went out to Amazon.com and read their reviews. The only negatives seem to be from folks who hated the voice on the audio-book or hadn't read the first three books. So the worst I can say is that you really should read these books in their proper order.

   .I give Something Rotten an A+ cuz I can't find anything to even quibble about. The book, and the series, will appeal to just about everyone, and it is even suitable for the kiddies.

(*) : Yeah, I know there is a fifth Thursday Next book out - "First Among Sequels". But in looking at it (it's on my TBR shelf), it takes place 14 years after Something Rotten, and is probably the start of another series of Thursday Next adventures. Here's hoping that's what's happening.

The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde

2004; 373 pages. The third book in the Thursday Next series. Genre : Literary Fantasy. Overall Rating : B+..

    With Spec-Ops, Goliath Corp., and Aornis Hades after her; and since she's with child and without her husband; Thursday decides to get into a book. Literally. It's a great place to hide. Caversham Heights is an atrocious yawner of a novel that no one in his right mind will ever read.
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Of course, the peace and quiet is short-lived. Murder and mayhem are afoot, and Aornis implants a memory worm in Thursday's head, meaning all her recollections about her hubby Landen are fading fast.
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What's To Like...
    98% of the book takes place in the literature world that Fforde's created. And what a world! The generics (minor characters initially without any character development) are cool. Grammasites run rampant, not to mention a 420-pound, 7'4" feral Minotaur. There's murders to be solved and lots of book-jumping.

.Splitting hairs over loose ends...
    Fforde manages to tie up most of the plotlines he creates in WOLP, but no progress is made on any of the loose ends carried over from the first two books of the series. Landen is still MIF (Missing In Fiction); Thursday's dad is still on the run, and her brother Anton's death promises to be a major topic at some point in the future. About all that's changed by the end of WOLP is that Thursday has trouble buttoning her pants.

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The 923rd Annual Bookworld Awards ("Bookies")...
   The book culminates with this spoof of the Oscars. Dastardly deeds are laid bare, and the murderer is unmasked, but it's the awards that steal the show. Among the hundreds of Categories are : Most Implausible Plot in SF; Most Creepy Character in a Dickens Novel; Most Troubled Romantic Lead; Best Talking Cat; Most Incomprehensible Plot; The Shakespearean Character You'd Most Like to Slap; and Best Dead Person in Fiction. Hey, I'd certainly tune in to watch this Awards Ceremony.
.In summary, WOLP is good, but not great. The plot takes a while to get going, and the book has the overall feel of existing merely to set up the next one. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, what with all its book-jumping and literary allusions. Perhaps the whole series will only appeal to a dyed-in-the-wool bibliophile.

Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde

2002; 399 pages. Genre : just as many as The Eyre Affair had. Overall Rating : B+..

    Thursday Next's life has become rather hectic. She's pregnant, and her hubby's been time-napped. Someone is trying to kill her with coincidences. The Spec-Ops cops and Goliath Corp. consider her a liability. Uncle Mycroft has retired and Daddy is still on the run, stopping by only to tip her off that Armageddon is coming in the form of a pink sludge.
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What's To Like...
    The primary literary import this time is Miss Havisham, the man-hating dowager from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Fforde brings Havisham into the 20th Century and adds delightful depth to her character. She has a passion for anything with a powerful engine, and you are advised not to get into any vehicle that she's driving/steering.

.   Equally engaging is the Cheshire Cat, who reminds me a lot of the orangutan Librarian in the Discworld series. Indeed, LIAGB is rife with literary references - besides Great Expectations, the following are either visited or export characters to Fforde's book : Kafka's The Trial; Alice In Wonderland; Poe's The Raven; and even Beatrix Potter's Peter Cottontail series. Another half-dozen books make cameo appearances. I dare say that Fforde does for classic literature what Disney animated movies and cartoons do for classical music.

.   There is the same zaniness and wit as was in The Eyre Affair, and the same plethora of plotlines. Alas, Fforde seems to have developed Robert Jordan Syndrome. That is, he starts a lot more plotlines than he finishes. The drove me crazy in the Wheel Of Time novels.

.   The ending is a bit contrived, and only ties up one of the loose ends. There isn't a lot of romance here, what with Next's husband having been spirited away to parts and times unknown.

   .Fforde uses a different approach to the classics in this story. There's a lot more time/dimension travel, a lot more classics visited; but no altering-of-endings that I could discern. That's probably for the better, as it opens the door for Fforde's creativeness.

   .I enjoyed Lost In A Good Book just as much as The Eyre Affair, and since my local library carries all five books in the series, it is likely that I'll read the gamut. Book 3 is titled The Well Of Lost Plots, which is a repository for all those storylines that were thought of, but never published. One can only imagine what the fertile mind of Fforde will do with that.

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde

2001; 374 pages. Genres : a whole slew of them. Overall Rating : B+..

    "I was born on a Thursday, hence the name. My brother was born on a Monday, and they called him Anton - go figure. My mother was called Wednesday, but was born on a Sunday - I don't know why - and my father had no name at all - his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard after he went rogue. To all intents and purposes he didn't exist at all. It didn't matter. He was always Dad to me."
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    This is a unique and ambitious book. It incorporates at least eight genres - Romance, Alt. History (okay, "Parallel Universe" if you want to split hairs), Time Travel, Action-Thriller, Dimension Travel, Literary Fiction, Vampires, and last but not least, Satire.

.What's To Like...
    First of all, you don't need to have read Jane Eyre to enjoy this book. For us unread yokels, Fforde gives a brief synopsis of JE as the storyline heads "into" that book. If any of the aforementioned genres appeal to you, you'll find TEA a delight. And there's four more in the series (maybe five now), all involving classic literature rewrites.
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    Other highlights : pet dodo birds; an independent Republic of Wales, a bunch of likeable good guys along with some interesting bad guys, some really kewl inventions by Thursday Next's Uncle Mycroft, and Shakespeare's Richard III done in a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" fashion.
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    There are a few weaknesses. When you have eight genres and maybe a dozen plots and sub-plots flowing through the story, it is well nigh impossible to give enough attention to all of them. The time-travel seems superfluous, as does Wales' being an independent nation. Perhaps these are more fully developed in the sequels.

    .My gut feeling is that Fforde's ultimate goal in writing The Eyre Affair was to rewrite the ending to Jane Eyre. One can't just up and do that; people would call you presumptuous. So he invented an incredibly complex universe and storyline, and used them as a vehicle to alter the ending. Was Fforde successful in this? In my opinion, yes.