Rating: 
Summary: The Series Keeps Getting Better
Review: 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:
Summary: The World of Fiction
Review: Jasper Fforde has done it again! LOST IN A GOOD BOOK is Thursday Next's second adventure in the world of books and it's just as much fun as her first, THE EYRE AFFAIR. In this adventure in an alternate version of our universe, Literotecs like Thursday Next wander through the plots of books, protecting them and their characters from nefarious people who try to change plots or do away with characters. While Thursday tries to rescue her "kidnapped" husband, she meets characters like Dickens's Miss Havisham and Marianne from SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. This novel's reader, Elizabeth Sastre, does just as fabulous a job as she did with the first novel. Each character has his or her own distinctive voice and accent, and Thursday especially is very appealing. Anyone who loves fiction will love this book! I can't wait for Thursday's next adventure THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS!
Rating:
Summary: Thursday Next Returns
Review: Reading a book that makes you laugh and think at the same time is an odd situation, but this book, like the first in its series, is that type of work. The author has included so many literary people, places and hints that you really have to be "up" on literature to get everything that's thrown at you. Of course, you don't have to be that erudite to enjoy the puns and the play on names that are encountered. There's a Mr. Schitt-Hawse therein, but also expendible characters known variously as Phodder, Kannon, Walken and Dedman. That's only the "tip of the iceberg", as they say. We also get very well acquainted with Miss Havisham, the Cheshire Cat, and the Red Queen, not to mention King Pellinore and the Questing Beast. A little aside about Shelley caused gales (sorry about the pun) of laughter from me. This series is quite something, and I look forward very much to following Thursday's many future (or past?) adventures.
Rating: 
Summary: Incident overload at the expense of real storytelling
Review: Fforde's problem is he suffers from an abundant and uncontrolled imagination. The Thursday Next books offer way too much to ever really enjoy them. I first started this book eagerly after completing The Eyre Affair in a rapid few days. But I soon got fed up with Lost in a Good Book and set it down for an entire year. It had no story, it was all incident. The plot (or what I thought was the plot) of attempting to get Landen back was continually pushed into the background in favor of snippets that were completely uncontributory to the supposed story. It reminded me more and more of a Monty Python episode -- jumping from sketch to sketch in a surreal blend of dimensional madness. That may work visually, but it doesn't work on the printed page. What was the point of it all? Suddenly the whole world of SpecOps was dumped to make room for the Jurisfiction world. Why didn't Fforde just start with that? Why create one alternate police squad and then abandon it and create a brand new one? It's almost as if he writes to entertain himself. All the books are filled with in jokes of the "well read." Even his website seems to be a bit patronizing for those who are unfamiliar with "Great Literature." Yet his choices are very heavily weighed on the Brit Lit side. The only venture outside of the English language so far has been Kafka. And there is little representation from American Lit. The Jurisficiton world (and all of Fforde's tastes for that matter) seems pretty shallow to me. Also these books seem like a failed TV series that was turned into a "novel," but the problem is --despite Fforde's knowledge of classics of "Great Literature"-- he doesn't at all understand the concept of what makes a novel. He only understands plot elements and incidents. That is where the Thursday Next books succeed: in the individual (and sadly unrelated, almost nonsequitar-like) set pieces. The books would make a better short story collection with interrelated characters than in passing them off as novels. Maybe this is part of the big joke. But I kind of get tired of all that stuff. All the gadgets, all the dizzying rules and laws, the Generics, the grammasites, the PageRunners and on and on. Enough already. Stop overloading us with information. Tell a story! Interestingly, Fforde writes like a 19th century serial novelist constantly reminding the reader of things that have occurred in the past chapters, the crucial things thankfully, and you can put his books down for a full year and never suffer. Perhaps that's a good thing, but for me it's a major fault. Fforde's ever growing gargantuan monstrosities of fantasy/sci fi/crime novel genre-bending are beginning to weary me. A nice diversion but no real lasting pleasure.
Rating: 
Summary: "They say the first time you save the world is the hardest."
Review: Thursday Next, a member of the Literary Detective Division of Special Operations in England, lives in looking-glass universe in which all the "givens" of our world are turned upside down. The Crimean War has just ended after 150 years, Thursday has a pet dodo, and Neanderthals have been reintroduced to the world. Her father, a former ChronoGuard, travels through time and can alter both the past and the present, and her uncle Mycroft has invented a Prose Portal, which allows people from the "real" world to travel inside books, an invention that the evil Goliath Corporation covets. Thursday has just solved a difficult case, The Eyre Affair, in which she saves characters in Jane Eyre from murder and gives the book a better conclusion, and she has trapped the unscrupulous Jack Schitt of the Goliath Corporation inside Poe's "The Raven." In this sequel, the Goliath Corporation teaches Thursday a lesson, eradicating her husband, Landen Parke-Laine, by manipulating time so that he dies in an accident when he is a baby. Thursday, who has just found out that she is pregnant, now finds that she does not know who the baby's father is--because Landen never existed after the age of two. Blackmailed by Goliath, she must free Jack Schitt from "The Raven" if she ever wants to see Landen again. Miss Havisham from Dickens's Great Expectations, a long-time employee of Jurisfiction, takes her as an apprentice and tries to teach her how to get inside fiction without the Prose Portal and perhaps figure out a way to retrieve Landen. Like The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book is the wackiest of pleasures, with off-the-wall literary characters performing outrageous deeds in which none of the "rules" of our universe apply. The plot and intrigue gain in complexity with the discovery of Cardenio, an unknown, and possibly phony, play by William Shakespeare, while pink slime threatens the existence of life on earth. The action is here episodic and the subplots do not really mesh, but each change of scene and subplot sets up opportunities for Fforde to show off his prodigious literary knowledge and wacky humor. The reader quickly becomes so caught up in the hullabaloo, that weaknesses, such as a looseness of plot and a lack of dramatic tension, can be excused. Commander Braxton Hicks, Akrid Snell, Chalk and Cheese, Dedman and Walken, Millon de Floss, Spike Stoker (the vampire containment expert), Alf Weddershaine and Sarah Nara, are as much a part of the fun as the outrageous puns, word play, and satire. The novel is high energy and high humor, and Fforde is well on his way to creating a heroine and a series which will gain him legions of fans. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: Real world + fictional world = a link --> Next :)
Review: After reading "The Eyre Affair", the first book in Fforde's "Thursday Next" series, I was delighted. I loved the characters, the premise of a different world where literature was such an encompassing passion, and the possibility that some of the characters had of "jumping into" books, thus being able to interact with many personages from literature. "The Eyre Affair" was witty, funny, easy to read, and enthralling: I couldn't have liked it more... But, as a result, I was somewhat afraid of reading its sequel, "Lost in a good book". I asked myself how on earth could Fforde write another book as good as the first one... I really couldn't imagine an answer, but thankfully my curiosity was stronger that my fear of finding the sequel not good enough. "Lost in a good book" brings the same characters, but new situations, and developments that make the story richer. Spec-Ops 27 Thursday Next is now a celebrity, and she must deal with that, something that is quite difficult for her. As if that were not enough, the Goliath Corporation blackmails her into bringing back Mr. Schitt (trapped by Thursday in one of Poe's poems in "The Eyre Affair"). As she is indifferent to the Corporation's threats, and to the money it offers her, they eradicate her husband (at the age of two years) with the help of a corrupt Chronoguard, promising to bring him back once Schitt is returned. But... how will Thursday do that, without the Prose Portal that previously helped her to jump into books?. Thursday has problems in the "real world", but she discovers soon enough that that is not all. She is accused by Jurisfiction of a "fiction infraction", due to the fact that she accidentally changed the end of "Jane Eyre". Jurisfiction, as the fictional lawyer assigned to her explains, is "the service we run inside novels to maintain the integrity of popular fiction". Consequently, she will be prosecuted in Kafka's "The Trial". Sounds strange?. Stranger things will happen when Next becomes an apprentice to Miss Havisham (from "Great Expectation"), in order to become one of Jurisfiction's agents. This review is already too long, and I haven't mentioned the difficulties surrounding the authentication of "Cardenio" (one of Shakespeare's lost plays), the visits to other books (for example Austen's "Sense and sensibility"), Pickwick's egg (her pet Dodo is a "she") or the fact that somebody is trying to kill Thursday through coincidences... Did I pointed out that Fforde goes on introducing literary devices that make the reader laugh?. I guess I will have to leave that, and many things more, for you to discover :) On the whole, I can say that even if "Lost in a good book" is similar to "The Eyre Affair" in some aspects (characters, main premises), it continues to develop Fforde's "world", and doesn't merely repeat the things that were already said in the first book. In my opinion, in this book we get to know more about Thursday and the people that surrounds her, but we also realize that there is much more to the fictional world that we had supposed. As a matter of fact, the "fictional" world and the "real" world are intrinsically connected, and Next is one of the links. What can I say?. Read this book as soon as you can. You won't regret it, and you are likely to do the same thing that I am doing right now... That is to say, you will wait anxiously for the next book in the series, and in the meanwhile you will recommend "The Eyre Affair" and "Lost in a good book" to others, so that they will know what they were missing without being aware of it :) Belen Alcat
Rating:
Summary: Thursday Next Learns the Art of Bookjumping
Review: For those individuals who are not familiar with Jasper FForde's intriguing and delightful heroine Thusday Next, this review can easily be summarized with the very strong advice to read the series in order and start with THE EYRE AFFAIR (4/14/2004 review). That is a wonderful book in its own right, and introduces you to both Thursday and the alternate universe which she inhabits in much greater detail than is provided in this book. While this book has sufficient background to be an enjoyable read on a standlone basis, a reader who starts with this volume would lack a great deal of very important context; since the first book is a wonderful read on its own and in many ways is a much more traditionally structured novel than this sequel, there is no reason not to read it before getting LOST IN A GOOD BOOK. If EYRE AFFAIR does not appeal to you, there is no reason to read this book, because its plot is even more unusual and convoluted. As this story begins, Thursday has become a celebrity based on her stuggle with Archeron Hades and the rebookment of Jane Eyre. She would like time to recuperate, spend time with her new husband Landen and pet Dodo Pickwick (plock plock), and return to the relative obscurity of her posting in Swindon as an SO-27 Literatec. However, Landen soon disappears; his history and their marriage apparently somehow eradicated by the ever dangerous Goliath Corporation, who are intent on forcing Thursday to cooperate in the rescue of their operative Jack Schitt (who was stranded in a copy of THE RAVEN at the conclusion of Thursday's previous adventure). While investigating the mysterious discovery of CARDENIO, a previously unknown but apparently authentic Shakespeare play, a bizarre sequence of coincidences eventually convinces Thursday that she no choice but to become a PRO (Prose Resource Operative) if she is to have any chance of resurrecting Landen and incidentally also deflecting the apparent end of civilization. Thus she arrives in the great library which houses the WELL OF LOST PLOTS (the third book in the series), meets The Chesire Cat (who annoyingly keeps disappearing) and is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, a woman with incredibly modern tastes for a character from Dicken's GREAT EXPECTATIONS. And the fun and adventure proceeds in Fforde's characteristically unique fashion. This book has all the characteristics which make this series so enjoyable - clever wordplay in abundance, wonderful literary allusions, and the allure of pure escapist fantasy in which the reader can completely lose himself or herself. Not only is this an alternate universe, but we have another level of (un)reality incorporated through the introduction of the world of Jurisfiction, with its whole new methodology, vocabulary and methods of communication. Time warps are possible; the role of the Chronoguards (including Thursday's renegade father) is crucial to this story. The reader gets to learn more about many of the characters in the first book, and in addition meet some really unique individuals in the course of this adventure. You will probably be able to guess the fate of SO-5 operatives Phodder and Kannon, and might not even be surprised to learn that their replacements were Walken and Dedmen. But if you are curious about the meaning of the word xplkqulkiccasia, want to learn about the role of Neanderthals in1985 England, and desire to meet the aptly named PR operative Coredelia Flakk, you'll definitely have to read this book. I have tried to furnish a flavor of this story in this review, because a summary is really impossible and a detailed description would both include many spoilers and at the same time not do justice to the author's achievement. One further note, in addition to the clever use of literary excerpts at the beginning of each chapter, a new device is employed through the occasional use of footnotes for a very interesting purpose. And perhaps the most amazing single episode in the book involves a literally Kafkaesque TRIAL in which Thursday participates. My only caution would be that this book is clearly intended to serve as a transition novel, or the bridge which provides the direction necessary to transform the original story into a fullblown series featuring Thursday's universe. Thus, while I loved it and found it extremely clever and a true FUN READ, it is much more a series of interrelated incidents (which lead to a very satisfying conclusion) than the sort of straightforward plot found in THE EYRE AFFAIR. Tucker Andersen
Rating:
Summary: Clever, laugh out loud, with strong emotional moments
Review: Literary Detective Thursday Next, who has just discovered she is pregnant, is in hot water again when her husband, Landen, is eradicated at age 2 in an evil attempt by the corrupt Goliath Corporation to blackmail Thursday. In her previous adventure, Thursday trapped one of Goliath's key employees inside The Raven, and they want him back. If all this sounds impossibly confusing, it isn't once you get into the swing of Fforde's incredibly complex alternate reality. Thursday, who has slipped into an alternate alternate reality where she has no husband (but seems to have a mysterious boyfriend named Miles of whom she has no memory), is determined to do whatever it takes to get Landen back. To meet Goliath's demands she has to learn how to jump into books without the help of her uncle's invention, the Prose Portal, which has been destroyed. She seeks out the mysterious Mrs. Nakajima, the only other person Thursday knows who can "book jump." Her search leads her into the shadowy world of Jurisfiction, where a dedicated group of fictional characters police the fictional world from inside the books, just as Thursday's agency, LiteraTec, does from the human side. As an apprentice to Miss Haversham (yes, that Miss Haversham), Thursday undertakes her education while dodging evil Goliath persons, coincidences gone wild, and a corrupt ChronoGuard agent attempting to catch Thursday's time-jumping fugitive father (who often pops in to give Thursday a hand). And then there's Pickwick, Thursday's genetically engineered dodo, who has laid an egg . The second Thursday Next installment is every bit as fun as the first. The writing is incredibly clever, filled with literary allusions and amazingly deft wordplay. About 90 percent of it goes straight over my head, but the 10 percent that I do get is plenty to make me laugh out loud. And just when you think it can't get any crazier or funnier, you get socked between the eyes with tender, emotional moments that make me wonder if Thursday could actually "book jump" into my living room.
Rating:
Summary: THREE THUMBS UP! (Being a mutant myself, what can I say?)
Review: Poor Thursday. Just when she's out of "Jane Eyre", she's smack in the middle of a reprint of "The Raven."
This is not good. This is definitely not good.
But it's a lot of fun. To get her husband back, Thursday Next must delve into literature, and jump from book to book, to rescue her erst-while husband, who may not exist, being wiped from reality by the Chrono-guards.
Be afraid. Be very Afraid.
Be tickled. Be very Tickled.
Fford's prose is a shot of white-lightening on an empty stomach. His (Oh god help us) references are too close to home to be more than funny and a little less than thought-provoking, and a joy to read!
Literary readers will scramble for reference books. Too bad, as Thursday Next will have been there first, and tidied them up a bit. Ordinary readers (being not Literature-types) will rollick in the humor, catch the best puns, but unless the reader is with "IT", could very likely miss the point.
Cudos, Mr. Fforde. Fantasy is now Literary, or is literacy now fantasy, and much, much too enjoyable. BUY THESE BOOKS. READ THEM. Catch a pun, win a prize. Catch a particulr metaphor, win a book. Catch the point, and sit at home satisfied that I get it. While the rest of the world sits home and waits for "something" to happen. While you're waiting, read these books. It will help pass the time.
Rating:
Summary: You know you love Miss Havisham
Review: Who doesn't want to know more about Miss Havisham? God knows she was the saving grace of GREAT EXPECTATIONS. In this sequel to THE EYRE AFFAIR, we find Thursday losing Landen and trying to find him, while also saving the world. The witty pundits, and tongue in cheek naming, along with the ironic musings of Fforde make this a great ode to the reading man. However, these books really should be read in order, since Fforde doesn't waste time reiterating the rules of the little world he has created. After all, he is writing for readers, and I suppose he hopes that we have read the first in the series.
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