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Title: Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next Novels (Penguin Books)) by Jasper Fforde ISBN: 0-14-200403-0 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 24 February, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.59 (56 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Series Keeps Getting Better
Comment: LOST IN A GOOD BOOK is Jasper Fford's second book in the Thursday Next series. I found it to be every bit as good as the first, THE EYRE AFFAIR, and I'm already looking forward to the spring of 2004 when the next book, THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS, becomes available.
In THE EYRE AFFAIR, we were introduced to Spec-Ops Agent Thursday Next, a tough female investigator in Literary Division. The year is 1985, but the world in which Thursday lives is not the world you and I know. It's an alternate universe in which England, still the dominant world power, is almost a police state, the Crimean War has lasted 150 years, and the world's biggest superstars are authors. You can buy Clone-Your-Own-Dodo kits over the counter and the main means of mass transportation is via airship.
In this adventure, Thursday's husband has been eradicated by the corrupt Goliath Corporation. Eradication involves going back in time and making sure that person never exists. In order to blackmail Thursday into doing their dirty work, the Goliath agent Mr. Schitt-Hawse (pronounced just the way you think it is) has left Thursday's memories of her husband intact, along with the baby she happens to be carrying. Goliath's demand? That Thursday jump into Poe's poem THE RAVEN and release another Goliath agent whom she had imprisoned there. The only problem is, the Prose Portal which allowed her to jump into JANE EYRE in THE EYRE AFFAIR has been destroyed.
The answer is provided when Thursday is recruited for the top-secret Jurisfiction, an elite team of mostly fictional characters who protect and maintain the integrity of all the world's books. She is apprenticed to Miss Havisham of Dicken's GREAT EXPECTATIONS fame, complete in tattered wedding dress, and soon Thursday is learning how to jump into books without a Prose Portal. Meanwhile, a mysterious enemy is trying to kill Thursday by coincidence, the world is scheduled to end in just a few days, and Thursday isn't sure Goliath will reactualize her husband even if she does what they want.
Author Fford expands on the world and characters introduced in THE EYRE AFFAIR quite successfully. As in the first novel, there are more than a few times when you will have to suspend belief or overlook a particularly large plot hole, but it's worth it for the pure enjoyment of the read. There are even more in-jokes and a whole barrel-load of laugh out loud moments. And to top it all off, there's quite a bit of social commentary hidden in there as well. It's one of those books you feel compelled to read sections of aloud to anyone who happens to be nearby, just to share the wealth. Thursday continues to evolve into an ever more interesting character and I felt sad when the book ended. I'm already waiting impatiently for her next adventure.
Rating: 3
Summary: A good sophomore effort, but almost too much to handle
Comment: Time travel, Neanderthal lawyers, mammoth migrations, Supremely Evil Being hunts, stupid second law of thermodynamics tricks, diabolical corporations bent on retribution, all life on earth reduced to a pink goo, and - of course - Miss Haversham (of Dickens' "Great Expectations") doing her best Mario Andretti through the streets of England can mean only one thing: Thursday Next is back.
Jasper Fforde returns his sassy literary detective of "The Eyre Affair" for a second escapade in "Lost in a Good Book," as she battles enough bad guys to make MI-5 jealous. A special operative tracking malfeasance as it relates to books and lit (in a world that craves Shakespeare more than Spears), Thursday finds herself blackmailed into retreiving a Goliath Corporation enforcer she previously left trapped in Poe's "The Raven." Her new husband erased by the time-traveling ChronoGuards, Thursday winds up stuck in an alternate timeline she can't undo. Add to this the mysterious appearance of an unknown Shakesparean work, throw in a bizarre set of coincidences that seem bent on wiping her out as well , then top it off with her time-hopping fugitive father showing her the end of the world will come in a few weeks unless she can stop it, and our poor heroine is up the Thames without a paddle.
But all is not lost, for Thursday has a new trick up her sleeve: she can jump into books without the aid of her uncle's Prose Portal (from the first book.) Her skill brings the attention of Jurisfiction, a motley assortment of literary figures who are responsible for maintaining the integrity of all written material. Apprenticed to Miss Haversham, she quickly builds her skills to the point that she can even enter into the verboten Poe books, saving the world along the way.
In what can only be described as a whirlwind of a comic sci-fi thriller, "Lost in a Good Book" finds Fforde ratcheting up the tension to unbearable levels. His writing chops are clearly a step up from "The Eyre Affair", but good grief! This book has enough plots, characters, action, and mayhem to be ten books. It's too much; the result being that nearly every scene is clipped in order to fit into its almost four hundred pages. This makes for an outstanding page-turner, but a confusing one to review. It actually lacks the depth of "The Eyre Affair" while - oddly enough - being more satisfying than its predecessor. Thursday has shed some of her Ally McBeal-ness, the villain is less over-the-top, and the author's gears are showing a bit less. The talent has caught up, but Jasper, please take it easy!
In my review of "The Eyre Affair" I commented that the book was "Douglas Adams Lite." Well, "Lost in a Good Book" begins its first page honoring Adams with an in-joke his fans will recognize. For anyone who has read both series, the comparisons with Adams' "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" are impossible to miss, but for those of us dying for that brand of humor and recklessness, "Lost in a Good Book" will definitely assuage the longing.
Enjoy!
Rating: 5
Summary: Loved getting "Lost in a Good Book"
Comment: I wouldn't have believed it possible, but this sequel is even better than Jasper Fforde's first Thursday Next novel, "The Eyre Affair." And I adored that book! But this tale has such an emotional core - still funny, but wonderfully thoughtful, as Thursday races back and forth through time, trying to save the world and her husband, Landen, who has been "eradicated" by the big, bad corporate control monster, Goliath. The time travel scenes are gorgeous, and I love how Jasper Fforde makes his readers think "outside of the box" with his fantastical concepts and characters. I was also completely delighted by Thursday's further adventures in the literary world, going everywhere from Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" into Kafka's absurd text, meeting the Cheshire Cat and Red Queen from "Alice in Wonderland," and of course, studying the fine art of "book jumping" with Miss Havisham from "Great Expectations." I LOVED this book, and greatly look forward to jumping into the next one in the series, "The Well of Lost Plots."
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Title: The Eyre Affair: A Novel by Jasper Fforde ISBN: 0142001805 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Well of Lost Plots: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde ISBN: 0670032891 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 19 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Time Traveler's Wife (Today Show Book Club #15) by Audrey Niffenegger ISBN: 1931561648 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 17 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin ISBN: 0575074019 Publisher: Gollancz Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Something Rotten: A Thursday Next Mystery by Jasper Fforde ISBN: 0670033596 Publisher: Viking Books Pub. Date: 05 August, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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