Another cracker from Jasper - Rated 
I don't laugh out loud much these days - but if I do I'm probably reading a Fforde novel. Having browsed the earlier reviews on this site I would add these comments: I agree there was a lot of plot reviewing from earlier books, but I found this helpful. Since reading "Something Rotten" I've been reading the Nursery Crime books, and all the reminders in FAS were useful memory joggers - they've also prompted me to re-read the series. Some reviewers didn't like the plot, the 'technical' ideas and the pace; also there were some comparisons with Douglas Adams. I read Fforde books in the same way I read the Adams books - I give my analytical side the day off and just enjoy the ride.
I tried very hard to take as long as possible to read this book in order to make the enjoyment last as long as possible, but I read the last third in one night - couldn't put it down.
A bridge novel? - Rated 
The first four Thursday Next novels were contained within a story arc that ended with the fourth novel. First Among Sequels attempts to get things going again, and it does pretty well to begin with. Swindon's more exotic branches of law enforcement are officially defunct, but actually continue behind the facade of a carpet superstore. The new reality takes some time to set up, and it's a while before there's any real direction to the narrative. Indeed, the amount of explantion of the ins and outs of jurisfiction and the book world in the first half is quite offputting.
Fforde pulls it all together just after half way through, though, when the real story emerges, and from then on it's the familiar helter-skelter literary lunacy we've come to expect.
The end, though, hints at a new direction for this series. Might there be a certain amount of convergence with Fforde's other series, about the Nursery Crimes Division?
The Ultimate in Literate Satire and Imaginative Story Telling - Rated
In the Thursday Next series, we've been taken into a Wonderland of imagination that creates a humorous, whimsical place where stories and characters are born, develop, thrive, and die. Each of the previous stories uncovered bits and pieces of Jasper Fforde's fertile imagination for describing how fiction gets to be that way. The current world was also knocked askew by meddling from current humans so that we don't quite recognize it, but it does seem familiar nevertheless.
Inevitably, Jasper Fforde was bound to deal with that greatest of all literary challenges, a sequel that builds on what has gone before but plows little new ground. Naturally, by having created such a complex world, Mr. Fforde has to devote a fair amount of space to reintroducing us to what's gone on before. About midpoint in the novel, you'll feel adrift. Yet, the story wonderfully ties together in ways you'll never imagine. It's a remarkable accomplishment.
Thursday Next is older . . . and perhaps not too much wiser. This book takes place 14 years after Something Rotten. Her son Friday seems hopelessly committed to remaining a slug-a-bed who avoids school and showers with equal enthusiasm. That would be all right, but a future version of Friday keeps telling Thursday that there's a horrible crisis coming if Friday doesn't change his ways. In the Bookworld, Thursday finds herself spending time with the two most ineffective and challenging apprentices imaginable. Her uncle Mycroft is haunting her about something he can't remember. The Goliath Corporation is sending probes into the Bookworld as a way to prepare a tourism business. With the Stupidity Index at uncomfortable levels, the government proposes an insane attack on literature. Book reading is plummeting: Some book stores barely have any books in them. The Welsh cheese smugglers have started bringing in cheeses with explosive potential. Even rug-laying isn't the mundane task it used to be.
Will Thursday Next save the world? Can she revive excitement in sequels?
Save this book for a time when you are filled with a limitless desire to wonder and laugh.
Bravo, Mr. Fforde!
The Ultimate in Literate Satire and Imaginative Story Telling - Rated
In the Thursday Next series, we've been taken into a Wonderland of imagination that creates a humorous, whimsical place where stories and characters are born, develop, thrive, and die. Each of the previous stories uncovered bits and pieces of Jasper Fforde's fertile imagination for describing how fiction gets to be that way. The current world was also knocked askew by meddling from current humans so that we don't quite recognize it, but it does seem familiar nevertheless.
Inevitably, Jasper Fforde was bound to deal with that greatest of all literary challenges, a sequel that builds on what has gone before but plows little new ground. Naturally, by having created such a complex world, Mr. Fforde has to devote a fair amount of space to reintroducing us to what's gone on before. About midpoint in the novel, you'll feel adrift. Yet, the story wonderfully ties together in ways you'll never imagine. It's a remarkable accomplishment.
Thursday Next is older . . . and perhaps not too much wiser. This book takes place 14 years after Something Rotten. Her son Friday seems hopelessly committed to remaining a slug-a-bed who avoids school and showers with equal enthusiasm. That would be all right, but a future version of Friday keeps telling Thursday that there's a horrible crisis coming if Friday doesn't change his ways. In the Bookworld, Thursday finds herself spending time with the two most ineffective and challenging apprentices imaginable. Her uncle Mycroft is haunting her about something he can't remember. The Goliath Corporation is sending probes into the Bookworld as a way to prepare a tourism business. With the Stupidity Index at uncomfortable levels, the government proposes an insane attack on literature. Book reading is plummeting: Some book stores barely have any books in them. The Welsh cheese smugglers have started bringing in cheeses with explosive potential. Even rug-laying isn't the mundane task it used to be.
Will Thursday Next save the world? Can she revive excitement in sequels?
Save this book for a time when you are filled with a limitless desire to wonder and laugh.
Bravo, Mr. Fforde!
Frothy, fast and fun fun fun - Rated
Relentless pace and crazy ideas that other authors would devote a whole book to are taken up, turned over for a joke and discarded inside a few pages. Constant fun and changes of scene keep things buzzing from start to end, some may find the pace a little dizzying but the jokes are excellent and the infodump is so imaginative that it all seems worthwhile. As other reviewers of Fforde's books have noted, he is a genuine original.
In the story, Thursday has acquired a family and the shadow of the Crimean war that was so prominent in the first book, "The Eyre Affair" has retreated. Having just started a family myself I loved this aspect of the book and there are some moments of real pathos amongst the comedy. Thursday Next is a great female character and the changes in her life and character are wonderfully and convincingly written.
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