fantasy

I accidentally found The Eyre Affair while browsing in a favorite bookstore. After the first paragraph I was hooked and bought it on the spot. After I finished it I wasn't quite sure what I'd stumbled across...meaning, it is completely different from the books I usually read. It was also fun, original entertaining, made me laugh out loud many times, and very well-written.

When I realized that Lost in a Good Book was out, and also a sequel to Eyre Affair, I couldn't wait to read it, but figured also that it would follow the usual "sequel curse" of not being as good as the first. WRONG! It's better! And now I cannot wait to get "Well of Lost Plots"!

Thank goodness for Jasper Fforde! I love writers who think outside the box, take you on a journey with the characters and work your creative mind! They are few and far between these days. And for those of you who are avid readers, especially of the classics, you will love his infusion of those characters into the world of his heroine Thursday Next!

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!

"Lost in a Good Book," the sequel to "The Eyre Affair," by entertaining storyteller, Jasper Fforde, is a terrific addition to "The Thursday Next Series." Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal concidences.

This is one fun series you won't want to miss! (Highly Recommended!)