I did a marathon sprint on the Thursday Next series as I had the sixth one (One of our Thursdays is missing) from the library and was rereading books 1 to 5 before having to return it to the library.
I reviewed Jasper Fforde’s previous book (Shades of Grey) some time ago and I’m sure I’ve mentioned him before as I am quite a fan. Anybody who loves book must love his because he displays such a love and knowledge of books and literature. Characters from other books come alive in his. Maybe some time in the future, you made it in literature if your book or one of your characters is mentioned in one of his novels?
I think his books are published under the genre fantasy but they are hard to put in any one box. He certainly has enough imagination for half a dozen authors to spare and happily mixes fantasy, crime and comedy.
The Thursday Next novels are set in Swindon. On the surface, it may be very much like the town in England but it’s altogether a different world. Our heroine Thursday is a veteran of the Crimean War (ongoing after 100-odd years) and has recently returned to Swindon to join the local Literary Detective (SpecOps 27- Special Operations handle any policing that is seen to be too particular for the regular police force). Her pet is a cloned Dodo and her father a ChronoGuard, the Spec Ops branch that looks after time.
If I wrote in my last review of the Harry Potter that little is new, there’s little in a Jasper Fforde novel that is not new! The pace never slackens, funny, new ideas are coming thick and fast. The books are not only the most entertaining I read in years but they also challenge us with the way he treats our established world.
But the Thursday Next novels are set in two worlds. Next to the “real world”, Thursday also can enter a book and some of the novels are entirely set in the BookWorld where we learn all about how books are made and what makes a good book. Remember something I mentioned the other day about what contributes to a good book? Well, Jasper Fforde put that a lot better than I ever could: Pace, Atmosphere, Plot, Prose and Character. And he’s got it all.
Bibliography:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
First Among Sequels
One of our Thursdays is missing
He also has another series called the Nursery Crime Division and the above-mentioned start to a new series ‘Shades of Grey’. A recently published book ‘The Last Dragon-Slayer’ is the start to another new series.
