The Eyre Affair

Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: SpecOps officer Thursday Next is living the relatively quite life of a Literary Detective in 1985 Great Britain, when things begin to get really weird. I mean, as if zealous Baconians trying to prove that Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him and the Crimean War entering its 131st year weren't strange enough, Thursday is pulled into an attempt to arrest Acheron Hades, the third most wanted man in Britain. No camera can capture his likeness, and he has killed every Special Operations agent sent against him. But, there's one person who can just maybe defeat him, and that's Thursday Next!

OK, the above description probably doesn't help you much, I mean, what is up with the world of this story? Well, as the cover makes crystal clear, this is a surreal world where literature is embraced, stolen, forged, and treated like the greatest treasure on Earth! I must say, that I found it to be refreshingly different. This is a world that you will have to really work to wrap your mind around, but it is well worth it!

As for the rest of the story, I must say that I found the characters to be quite interesting, particularly Ms. Next and Edward Rochester (yep, him from Jane Eyre). Also, I found that the story held together quite well and was quite gripping to boot! Overall, I must say that I loved it! So, if you want to read a fascinating and quite different sort of book, then I highly suggest that you get this one. I give it my highest recommendations.


Rating:
Summary: Funny, amazing, interesting... I loved it!
Review: If you have the ability to get 'lost in a good book', to overlook shortcomings(not that there are any in this book) and just enjoy yourself, then do not pass up this book. Ignore any bad reviews. You will love the story and the characters, especially the main character, Thursday Next. If, however, you tend to focus on short-comings and faults and bring out the negatives in life/people/books/authors whatever...do not read this book. You will not like it. So...what type of person are you?

Rating:
Summary: Splat
Review: I really wanted to like this book. I love Harry Potter, I love Douglas Adams. I bought this and expected to get it home and devour it. Instead, I could barely bring myself to finish it. I have nothing against cleverly constructed alternate realities, but this was instead an alternate reality of pure cleverness, awash in puns and "highbrow" literary references that made me feel like I was being sassed at by a smart-alecky pre-teen bookworm. The writing was flat and trite, suited more to internet fanfic than a published novel. The characters were transparent, existing as not much more than stock caricatures with clever names and added, apparently, as needed, with no life of their own. Thursday Next herself failed to materialize at all. My advice: save yourself the crushing disappointment and don't even read the tantalizing book jacket - just pass this by and read, well, anything else.

Rating:
Summary: Cleverer and Cleverer
Review: Ingenuity, humor, a brilliant idea almost seamlessly carried out--nuggets of gold for book lovers on almost every page--even something for those Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans out there! A book with parts of some many other books deliberately woven into it, and yet like nothing else written (except for his sequels)!

Rating:
Summary: Clever fluff
Review: Not sure what I expected from this book. Something of a literary, speculative-fiction, mystery if the reviews and or back copy meant anything. I'd got it into my head that this would be something a little out of the ordinary, something a touch more clever than the average resident of the spec-fic ghetto.

On reading this, I didn't quite see that. Yes, this is an entertaining book - I never found myself bored or wishing I were reading something else. But frankly, interesting world and literary name-dropping aside, there's not much here that's new and/or dazzling. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with a book being a bit of entertaining fluff with which to while away an evening or two.

And this book *is* clever. The setting mixes a bit of alternate history (no American Revolution, Crimean War raging on for 130 years), sci-fi (time travel), fantasy (demons, vampires and werewolves) and this weird notion of blurred boundaries betwixt literature and real life. Fforde blends his elements together nicely, with a light, Douglas Adams-esque touch, and the real joy of this book is in his little throw-away details that make you smile at his cleverness.

Where he falls down is in plotting. The plot is, frankly, a bit standard. You can see most of the twists coming from miles off. And Fforde also seems to be juggling one too many threads - when he finally tries to bring everyting together, it feels a bit forced and clumsy. I suppose, given some of the interesting concepts that he starts with, I'd hoped that he could do a bit more than the usual good people chase bad people nonsense.

All that aside, I was both amused and diverted - which is nothing to complain about. As long as you don't expect anything revolutionary, and can enjoy some light, clever fluff, you should be more than happy to give some time to this book.

Rating:
Summary: As good as, worse and better than Adams and Pratchett
Review: Well, I can't help but go hard on comparison in this review - which is a bit harsh because it stands on its own. However, the feel of Adams and Pratchett is so strong... Moreover it may be useful to point out where Fforde differs from both.

The rules of the world - the glee with which the author can hurl his characters through six impossible things before breakfast - is straight out of whatever comedy/sf/fantasy sub-genre you could call the Adams/Pratchett thing. Fantasy/SF allows them wonderful licence in imagining worlds just a bit like ours but exaggerated or twisted. Indeed, Fforde is clearly writing alternative history/near future and tying his events more closely to the current time. A world where literature is followed more like football teams or religious cults, for example, is the sort of amusing and well executed notion I'd expect to find in either other author. The moderately central plot driving device of the Prose Portal felt very much like something Pratchett would build around (and even reminded me of Voldemort attacking Ginny Weasley from his magical diary).

The characters, similarly, are generally charming - and I think this is core to their popularity. For all the darkness and life threatening situations that can arise, most of the people, particularly the central characters, are amicable eccentric company - you like spending time with them. Fforde, like Pratchett and unlike Adams, throws in some irredeemable baddies along the way, but they don't set the tone of the book. Moreover Fforde's action hero Thursday Next is given some breadth as a character - haunted war veteran, smart-mouthed Chandleresque detective, vulnerable girl in love - and the book pretty much got away with it.

What particularly impressed me earlier on - apart from the laudable feat of being able to produce something worthy of comparison to two such able writers - was the mixing of serious and emotional bits with the comedy. I think Fforde pulled this off better than Pratchett, who can be irritatingly preachy at times, and Adams who feels just a bit more random to me. Thursday's personal saga with her comrade brother and her first love surprisingly integrates with an over the top fantasy-comedy. And her older brother, who I assumed was set up for a fall, actually was a lovely surprise and a powerful vehicle to help Thursday overcome some demons. Really enjoyable to have a funny and clever book that can also even offer a bit of half-decent drama.

I was a bit disappointed with the dénouement, it felt a bit too colour-by-numbers feel-good to me. Since Hades had no history or motive but just was this superhuman psycho out of and moving to nothing, his ultimate and pretty casual demise didn't mean that much. Fforde didn't give him any character (stock master criminal #4, even down to the arrogant educated dialogue): as Tony Hines ably said in *his* amazon review: `And if you're looking for a complex antagonist, forget it; Archeron Hades, Thursday Next's nemesis, might as well go by the name Snidely Whiplash and twirl his handlebar mustache.' Sure he was playing with the Shakespeare thing of all these happy weddings to finish the day, but it got a bit cloying for me (and Landen is the merest foil) - if he was just going to spoil us with the big cake at the end I'd rather just have had a little `happily ever after' epilogue.

Yeah, for all its strengths of humour, charm and originality, it should never be sold to anyone as a detective novel (and yes, this is possible even in a novel requiring so much suspension of disbelief). The central mystery doesn't exist - we know from almost chapter one who the bad guy is (and we don't even have an attempt to slowly work out the motive or vulnerability to solve how to defeat him). In a sense it's more a thriller - but with the wildly random tangents (hey, let's save the world from a temporal anomaly on the way home), it's a bit silly to expect the reader to run with any sort of suspense: we're aware that the rules can all change in an instant. The way `The Chamber of Secrets' deals with *its* prose portal is far more satisfying, plotwise, as a mystery/thriller. I think Fforde needed to tighten things up a bit to try for this aspect of the book, or alternatively to consciously make the thriller aspect incidental and revel in his anarchic stuff (as Adams often does - although the fabulous Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is surprisingly coherent). As it is he falls a bit between two stools.

Whatever, a nice discovery - there's not too many of this calibre, and I'll look forward to reading some more of his stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Fun and witty
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed the world created in Jasper Fforde's book The Eyrie Affair. His main character ,Thursday Next, is a strong, intelligent, and resourceful woman. Bravo!

Rating:
Summary: How much do you want to be Thursday?
Review: If you haven't read this book - please ignore the bad reviews, Fforde is one of the freshest writers out there and it would be a shame to miss this. I am completely amazed that people read this book and did not instantly A) want to be Thursday, B) want to have a dodo and C) fall in love with English literature all over again.

Fforde has taken a totally unique premise and built an entire world for us voyeurs (aka readers) to experience. His imagination is remarkable and the life of Thursday is both hilarious and some what familiar. Though her world is alien to our own, who can't relate to lost love, loony parents, disobedient pets, and of course, idiots at work. One also has to give credit to Fforde for being so well-read and knowledgeable. If you doubt that the man has an amazing grasp on literature, check out his website. There is a "reader" for all of the books that points out all those hidden meanings that one might miss in their enthusiasm to see what is happening to one's favorite Special Agent.

But a word of warning: if you haven't read Bronte's book, do that first. In reading The Jane Eyre Affair, one should have read the original Jane Eyre, otherwise it misses the point.



Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: When I came first came across the books, I was excited and intrigued. I have 5 young children who are avid readers (one an aspiring author) so I am always on the lookout for books that are imaginative, fun, and interesting. This seemed like it might fit. The biggest problem is the gratuitous profanity. There is no way I can share this book with my children when, for reasons not comprehensible, the author felt it necessary to through in f***. Maybe it makes it "more real". WRONG! The story also bogs down with the redundancy of Thursday's post-traumatic stress syndrome. It's okay to allude to some past experience and then later come back and clarify it or resolve it. But to go on and on is a tragedy for the reader.
The sequel "Lost in a Good Book", fortunately has the language cleaned up but it is extremely slow in places where we have to continually relive the heroine's past over and over again. It's even worse in this book.
As far as the imaginative and inventive, it is okay. After all nonsense can be fun. But the author sometimes can't quite make it work smoothly and coherently.
I usually give an author a second chance if I don't like the first book. I happened to get both at the same time. I will not be buying the third.