Rating: 
Summary: Best of the Best
Review: The Eyre Affair is a brilliant masterpiece that ranks up with its counterpart, Jane Eyre, as well as Harry Potter and David Copperfield. The style is so clever, the wordplay genius, the plot terrifying, captivating, and original. With wit and originality, Jasper Fforde was able to create a surreal yesterday.
The story follows Thursday Next, who lives in a 1980's England with a regenerated dodo (without wings) and works as a LiteraTec (one who helps to maintain books, particularly old manuscripts of novels/plays by Chalres Dickens and Shakespeare) in SpecOps (divided into thirty or so divisions, it is more or less the police force). She is a thirty-something veterean from the Crimea War, an ongoing battle between England and Russia, who had lost her brother in that war, and something more. Living in a world where time travel is possible (her father was in ChronoGuard, a SpecOps division, and is now rogue, bouncing throughout time to visit Thursday every once in a while), mammoths migrate, and werewolfs hunt down vampires, Thursday also has to deal with the antagonist, Acheron Hades.
An unprincipled villian, Hades nabs Thursday's uncle and aunt, steals the original Martin Chuzzlewhit manuscript, and, with Thursday's uncle's help, kills a minor character in that novel. Insistent upon wreaking havoc simply because he can, Hades then decides to kill Jane Eyre herself, completely remove her from the original manuscript, and thus from every copy of the book worldwide. It is up to Thursday to stop him.
This book has something for everyone. Scifi and fantasy, mystery, romance, and some portions of history, the writing and creativity makes this book a must have. The story begins by simply thrusting you into the world, so you have to continue with it for a few chapters, and not make your decision after the first two pages. A captivating read and particularly well-researched on the Jane Eyre parts.
Rating:
Summary: smart and funny with a bit of everything
Review: "The Eyre Affair" is a wonderful read. Set in an alternate history where literature, philosophy, and art inspire passionate debate and even rioting among the general populace, the book tells the story of literary police agent Thursday Next. In Thursday's world, time travel is possible and the line between fiction and reality is blurred. Using his unusual powers, the aptly named Acheron Hades has managed to hijack Jane Eyre - the woman, and thus the book. Thursday must set the world of literature right, capture the evildoer, and save her own skin.Everything about this book is likeable. It has elements of many several - detective, science fiction, literary references, even a romantic subplot. The characters, while underdeveloped, are quirky and entertaining. The story is readable and absorbing. It's not classic literature, and it's written with the bare nonchalance of many detective stories, but it sets out to delight and surprise and entertain, and it succeeds. It's the perfect Saturday pastime for any lover of books.
Rating: 
Summary: An attempt at clever
Review: Unfortunetly the plot of the book did not start until midway into the book. The last 1/4 of the book was pretty decent; it was a clever idea for a novel yet somehow it didn't come out right. The acutal "Eyre Affair" wasnt as main a part of the book as you would expect. The first half of the book was slow paced background that had little pertience to the plot. To make the book better, Fforde should have expanded the Jane Eyre part of the novel and perhaps made Thursday Next's stay in Eyre-land longer with more episodes. I just was amazed that the title had little to do with the book. I expected more from this book because the unique plot line appealed to me.
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!
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