Jasper Fforde books

Having read a good few good reviews of these books, I finally got around to reading 'The Eyre Affair' by Jasper Fforde in the summer time last year. It is brilliant, I loved it. The action takes place in the 1980s in an alternative history where the Crimean war is still going on, airships are more common than planes, Wales is a republic, Swindon is an important town, and so on. The main character is called 'Thursday Next' (female) and many other characters in the story have equally off-the-wall names, my favourite being 'Braxton Hicks'. I loved the aspects of that book where we got to explore that strange alternative reality - airships, cloned dodos, 'Spec Ops' and all the weird and mysterious things they do. The book is also fantastically well written by someone who knows how to manipulate language to great comic effect, whilst still being very, very clever. Part of the plot involves our heroine and the main villain getting inside an early manuscript of 'Jane Eyre' and inadvertently changing the plot for the better. In this story it was important that the action took place in an early manuscript - from which all subsequent versions of the book were taken - because then all versions of the book would be changed. Anyway, I read through that book in a few days and rushed headlong into the next Thursday Next book...

'Lost in a good book' is also a good book, but I would shy away from using the word 'brilliant' to describe it. Certainly, the author's fantastic use of language and highly entertaining spin on literary classics continues, but I found the actual plot to be less interesting. Only one of the two main plot strands started in this book is resolved here, the other (more interesting) strand is left unresolved and is carried over to the next book. The plot strand that is resolved (the end of the world is averted) is resolved a bit too quickly and cleanly at the last minute to be satisfying. In this book we get to find out a bit more of the alternative Swindon, and we find out more about getting into fictional books, but the whole thing was a bit of a disappointment compared to the first book. But as there was an unresolved plot, I rushed headlong into...

'The well of lost plots' picks up directly from the end of the previous book and basically leaves the unresolved plot from the last book totally unresolved throughout. The book ends and the only plot strand that I care about is still unresolved. Disappointing. The action in this book takes place almost entirely inside the 'Well of lost plots' - the unearthly repository of all the definitive versions of all books that have ever been written, or are in the process of being written, but have not been published. Here the characters in these books have independent lives of their own, etc. The main plot of the book is about the release of a new book 'operating system'. Its all a bit Microsoft really. I don't care! I like computers, I like books. One of the great things about books is that they are not computers! I don't want to read about an operating system for books. Basically I didn't care about 90% of the plot in this book. So, despite the ongoing, unresolved plot, I am in no rush to read the next book int he series. I may never read it. The storytelling is still done with great relish and joyous use of the English language, but a dull story well told is still a dull story. There are flashes of genius in there, I particularly liked the discussion of the "that that" and "had had" problem in literature, but I couldn't bring myself to care about the plot.

I'll read something by someone else next...