Rating: 
Summary: Bronte Fans Beware
Review: This book cashes in on one of the greatest books of all time without aspiring to be even literate. The book is one huge, smug, pretentious cliche that hopes that discussing greate literature is the same thing as creating it. This book is subpar and a waste of time. Lovers of Jane Eyre should avoid this book like the plague. The author's bio says that he "arranges words on a page." This is a very apt description for he is certainly not "writing." Fforde should return to his day job and stop wasting paper. Trees are precious.
Rating: 
Summary: A Wild, Imaginative "Affair"
Review: If you are a bibliophile, an anglophile, a sci-fi or a mystery fan (or preferably all four), then you will be greatly entertained by this novel. Even though it seems at times that this is a work of fiction that doesn't know if it wants to be silly or serious, The Eyre Affair is lots of fun (I loved the Will-Speak Machines!). I look forward (or backwards) to meeting up with Thursday Next again.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed but wonderful
Review: From all what you may have already read, this is not a perfect novel. There are shifts in the perspective one can hardly understand, some big logical gaps and a not very credible (read: a bit too perfect)heroine with some serious Bridget Jones thrown in for good measure. The third and fourth ending feel tacked on, one can't help but wondering if Thursday has to accomplish absolutely everything (including, of course, saving the world) in her first adventure. But what a wonderful, inventive, funny and satisfying read this is. It helps to have read Jane Eyre (I didn't), but it's by no means necessary. I loved the first ending of the book, which gets better and better steering towards the end. It is quite wonderful to check your disbelief at the door and just get lost in the novel. It's very satisfying to get some of the very clever literary allusions (my wife, an english major, pointed out the first one I missed in the very first lines), but it also doesn't matter if you only get a few of them (which I probably did). In short, it's a book for everyone that enjoys an intelligent, hilarious, inventive time travel romp full of historical and literary allusions. Everyone should.
Rating: 
Summary: The Eyre Unfair
Review: Argh. Argh. Argh. That's the sound of a man who wanted desperately to like a book being bitterly disappointed. "The Eyre Affair" is a novel with what sounds like an interesting premise, but winds up reading like the bastard love-child of Woody Allen and Douglas Adams. Of course, my disappointment is largely my own fault. I was sucked in by the jacket copy that sort of promised a romp through Jane Eyre in a world where people could enter works of fiction. For some reason I didn't stop to consider how patently ridiculous that idea is and how bad previous attempts at doing the same thing have been. Woody Allen tried it twice, once in a short piece and again in "Purple Rose of Cairo", and neither was particularly successful, so I don't know why I thought Fforde would be able to do any better. Actually, I do. It was the protagonist's name: Thursday Next. To come up with a name like that, I thought he must be a genius. What the jacket does not tell us is that a large portion of the plot hinges on time travel and huge, gaping paradoxes, a la Dirk Gently. Not that I mind such things, I just didn't expect them, and expecting them would have allowed me to suspend that particular logic detection system. But these quibbles aside, there was a lot to like about "The Eyre Affair". I liked the smug feeling I got from "getting" most of the English Literature references sprinkled throughout. I liked Thursday's dotty old uncle, an inventor who accidentally merengued one of his assistants to death. I liked the idea of a world that treats Shakespeare's Richard III as a "Rocky Horror" costume fest. Jasper Fforde's storytelling skills are breezy and fun, and he doesn't get too caught up in the cuteness of his own jokes; in fact, some of them are so subtle they hit you a few pages later. The characters are mostly interchangeable, with the exceptions of Thursday's dad, the chronoguardsman, Thursday herself, and Acheron Hades, the villain. Hades deserves some attention here. He almost works as a bad guy, just for the sheer joy he gets from being a bad guy. But if this were a cartoon, he would be constantly turning to the camera and grinning, saying, "Ain't I evil?", or something equally obvious. This gets old fast and Fforde would do well to arrest it in later installments. Also, we are offered no proper explanation for Hades' powers, which include invisibility and the ability to pass through solid matter. Cool tricks, but the laws of fiction demand we know why he has these powers when no one else does. I'm not sorry I read this and I wouldn't try to steer you away from it. But I do think you should have your Disbelief switch in the "Suspend" position when you start it. If you can get past the plot holes, you're in for a terrific ride.
Rating:
Summary: Where in the world is Jane Eyre?
Review: In his book, The Eyre Affair, the author Jasper Fforde has written a clever and humorous book which bookaholics will truly enjoy. Set in England in 1985, Mr. Fforde has taken certain liberties which provide the reader with an intiguing and unforgettable plot. Time travel and cloning which are both realities should delight readers in the imaginary world the author introduces us to. England is now a police state with the government divided into Special Operative Units with each Unit having a specific task. And in a book about books and characters from books, the author cleverly uses names of book related characters and authors for this books characters which provide some nice recollections of other books. Thursday Next, the main characters of this book is a member of Special Operations, SO-27 the Literary Detective Division. Almost from the first page the reader is captivated by this feisty character who reminded me in some ways of an older Pippi Longstocking. Once a Corporal assigned as a driver to the Armored Brigade, Thursday saw first hand fierce and bloody battles in the Crimea where her brother also lost his life. Now in 1985, she spends her time finding those criminals who steal valuable editions of books or alter the characters which affect the outcome of the books. But her life away from work is rather mundane as she broods over her man who got away and is visited from time to time by her father, a time traveler who is out of favor with the government. But suddenly, things are heating up as prime characters are being murdered in books and when Jane Eyre is missing from the pages of this book, Thursday knows she has the biggest case of her life right in her hands. Helping her out are a wonderful cast of characters which include an executive for a powerful company up to no good, an arch villain with the name of Archeron Hades, Thursday's ex- lover, her father whose "face could stop a clock" and even Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre herself. What takes place in the rest of the book is a roller coaster ride filled with many hilarious and unusual book moments. Mr. Fforde has crafted an innovative plot which is successfully achieved by his equally wonderful characters. The best part is the recent announcement that the author's next book will continue with the life and times of Thursday Next and I for one will be happy to see what she has been up to. This reader always likes to have something to look forwrd to and I can't think of anything better than another title by Jasper Fforde.
Rating:
Summary: Refreshing
Review: When reading this book, start with a completely open mind and a sense of frivolity and whimsy! In 1985, time travel is commonplace and most air traffic is by dirigible. And a young woman named Tuesday Next is after a crafty and dangerous criminal out to ruin great literature by kidnapping, maiming, or just outright killing characters from works of authors, such as Dickens and Bronte. Expect to laugh out loud and wait impatiently for the next installment of Tuesday's adventures.
Rating:
Summary: It starts out wonderfully, but...
Review: This book has some truly intriguing ideas in it, as well as some great humor, but the character development is nil. About one third of the way through the book, I began to feel as though I were watching a television program --something along the line of The Avengers (which I loved)-- and that feeling stayed with me right through to the end. It was entertaining, but ultimately unsatisfying.
Rating:
Summary: Great fun for the confirmed Anglophile
Review: Anglophilia meets Douglas Adams in this ingratiating sci-fi/detective story involving heroine Thursday Next, a member of a special police squad which maintains the purity of literary texts. In Next's world, literature and history are malleable realms, as is time. When master criminal Acheron Hades kidnaps Jane Eyre, all of next's skills are required to save this masterpiece. Awful puns and incisive satire make this a joy to read.
Rating:
Summary: fun but flawed
Review: Jasper Fforde has created a very amusing alternative universe and I absolutely enjoyed this book. Still, it's very obviously a first novel. The characters don't have much depth - even Thursday. The random shifts from first to third person whenever it suited him were annoying (and odd, considering a major plot point hinges on Jane's narrative NOT doing this). And his Blanche Ingram bit is just wrong, but not for any plot reasons so I'm not sure why.(I know, I sound like a member of the Bronte Federation, but it rankled.) However, I'll forgive a lot for the author who invented that Richard III performance, it was priceless. Definitely fluffy, but quite a bit of fun. I'll be ordering the next in the series from the UK site in July so as not to wait an extra 6 months for the US release.
Rating:
Summary: I want to live in Fforde's world
Review: It's not very often I find myself wrapped up in a book so much that I wish I could move to the world I'm reading about. This book is one of them. The only bad thing I can say about it is it was over much too fast. But then, that's my fault for slicing through it so rapidly. I won't try to describe the story here, partly because other people have done it already, but mostly because nothing I can try to write will do it justice. Just do yourself a favor and read it.
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