Rating: 
Summary: Better than the first one...and that's no coincidence...
Review: Thursday Next continues her physics-bending frolicking in the second book of Jasper Fforde's simply amazing fantasy series- Lost In A Good Book finds the intrepid SpecOps Agent on an adventure even more convoluted than the one she engaged in The Eyre Affair. Although it may sound implausible to suggest that the author actually topped his first tome, allow me to suggest it anyway, for the unbelievable has just become believable; if anyone who has read Affair scoffs cynically at the notion that lightning can strike twice, be prepared to sizzle a second time. The goods have been delivered, in a wonderfully competent and successfully satiating way, even with the pressure on. It doesn't take long for the plot to thicken; Fforde is a master at making things interesting soon into the game. Next has a plethora of items on her plate; let's see, where to start? For one thing, there is the Cardenio manuscript which needs to be investigated and authenticated. Then there is the prickly issue of Jack Schitt and his marooning in a copy of Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. The powers that be who are desirous of Jack's return erase Next's husband Landen from existence and offer his return in exchange for Next's assistance in rescuing him from the text as they would a plump carrot to a starving bunny. A collection of downright devious and impossibly uncanny coincidences plague the literary gumshoe- who or what is behind them? Is Acheron Hades back? Maybe...maybe not. Oh, and here's another thing...all the matter on the planet is about to lose any and all claims to homeostasis, thus causing a deevolution of existence into viscous, frothy slime, an armageddon of proteinaceous proportions. The key to solving all of these interconnected conundrums is the same as in Affair- Thursday must cross the threshold of reality and enter into the pages of several stories. In doing so, she comes across an infinite library which is home to all books; past, present, future, published, forgotten, everything is here; even glimmers of incipient notions and sections of putative plot. Fforde's spider-swift prose spins a numinous web where characters from the classics- such as Miss Havisham from Great Expectations and the Cheshire Cat from Alice In Wonderland- intertwine and fuse with incredibly novel, imaginative concepts such as a gravity-based tube for speedy global traversal and a device for quantifying levels of entropy composed of lentil beans and rice particles to tell a tale that, although as tall as a skyscraper, is nevertheless one any reader is willing to buy into. Each scene/chapter/sequence is a distinct building block, prefaced effectively by brief little epigraphs, and it is a thoroughly enjoyable experience trying to figure out how each block will eventually fit into the enigmatic tapestry being constructed. There is much humor present in the tale, which is always a risk for any author; except for a very minimal amount of puns which fell flat, the comedy was well-received (of special note are several small occurrences with Thursday's cloned dodo bird Pickwick). It truly is amazing to see how everything balances out in the end, how such a complex tale is rendered with seemingly effortless ease. This was no easy book to write, that's for certain; still, a feeling of parsimony will come over you as you complete each part, and it will feel as if you read a deep fable even though it is a totally escapist project at its core. So go ahead. Lose yourself in the world where Goliath Corp. rules with a shadowy fist and there's a guy named Spike who hunts not only the undead but supreme evil beings. This is a book made for the summertime- whether at the beach or in the shade, grab a copy and let Fforde's magic take hold. A superb read worth every star.
Rating:
Summary: How can you not love Thursday Next?
Review: Fans of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett in particular will love Jasper Fforde (doesn't that name sound as though it came right our of Hitchhiker's Guide?) and his extremely original heroine, Thursday Next. This is science fiction for the non-scientific fan of classic literature. If you've ever wanted to vacation IN a good book instead of WITH one, you'll enjoy this series. BTW, for hard-core Thursday Next fans who can't wait till 2004 for The Well of Lost Plots, the next book in the series, it's available NOW through Amazon's UK website!
Rating: 
Summary: Read Pratchett and Adams instead
Review: I very much wanted to enjoy this novel, but it just did not live up to my expectations. The heroine's plucky demeanor is mildly entertaining, but most of the plot devices seem to have been culled from two masters of literary sci fi/fantasy: Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. After struggling mightily to finish this book, I yearned for the energy and creativity of Soul Music and Thief of Time.
Rating:
Summary: Mind-bending, hilarious and sly
Review: Funny, original and fast-paced, full of word play and adventurous excursions into great works of fiction, Fforde's Thursday Next series is beach reading for literature lovers. His alternate universe, complete with time travel and fictional dimensions, hangs together with mind-bending logic, and Literary Detectives SpecOps Agent Thursday Next is resourceful, quick-witted, and determined, but still has lots to learn (code for blundering, impetuous and rash). As the story opens, newly married Thursday Next is enduring a round of celebrity for the exploits of her first adventure in "The Eyre Affair," in which she restored "Jane Eyre," with an "improved" ending, ended the Crimean War and defeated an arch villain, trapping a minor villain, a Goliath Corp. executive, in the stanzas of Poe's "The Raven." Amid all the furor nobody much cares about the lost exec, except his half-brother, head of Goliath, a conglomerate increasingly recognizable in our own world. But the Goliath boss cares enough to "eradicate" Thursday's husband in revenge, killing him off in a childhood accident. To get her husband back, Thursday must rescue the boss' brother from "The Raven." But the pages of Poe are dangerous and her navigation skills are shaky (though she is to be tried in Kafka for her interference with the Eyre ending). So she takes on a new career in Jurisfiction, apprenticing to Miss Havisham, though keeping her husband-saving mission secret from the sports-car mad, man-hating old lady. Meanwhile, she's dodging death-by-coincidence with the help of an entropy monitor - a jar of lentils and rice - given to her by her retiring genius Uncle Mycroft (who shows up mysteriously in the pages of Sherlock Holmes) and helping her eradicated, time-flitting father save the world from ending in pink goo within days. Jam packed with wit, winks, allusions and puns, fueled by a madcap plot and an ever burgeoning series of subplots and side trips, and fleshed out with the attention to detail that has earned Fforde comparison to J. K. Rowling and Terry Pratchett, this book provides hours of dazzle and delight.
Rating:
Summary: Lost in the Next Book
Review: The second in a delightful series of outrageous adventures by the literary detective Thursday Next will please those who enjoyed The Eyre Affair, although I think the ending of Lost is a bit less satisfying, and not because it is more of a cliff-hanger that the first book. All in all, however, a riot of silliness and bibliophilic goings-on. Lots of fun!
Rating:
Summary: I'm in love with Thursday Next
Review: Lost in a Good Book is the next adventure in the saga of Thursday Next, intrepid literary detective. Fforde takes the reader on another exploration of great literature, but makes it accessible even to the readers who haven't really read any of them. This book is an excellent addition to the mythos. It's a fast-paced romp that will leave you smiling and intrigued at the same time. Fforde takes the world that he created in The Eyre Affair and adds even more to it. In fact, he creates an entire fictional world beneath the "reality" that Thursday lives in. Characters from literature can travel to the real world, or to other books. An entire infrastructure of literary characters is charged with defending literature against evil-doers. The Jurisfiction organization, centered in the Great Library where every book (even books that only potentially existed) is housed, fights against everything from vicious creatures that eat vocabulary to Bowdlerisers, who travel through fiction trying to eliminate obscenity and profanity from it. In her travels, Thursday becomes the apprentice to Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations, a master book-jumper. All of this is in an attempt to learn how to get into "The Raven" and save her husband. Once again, I have to credit Fforde's imagination. There are so many cool concepts in this book that I won't give you any more. It would spoil some of the fun. Also like the first book, this is a triumph of prose and imagery over character, as most of the characters don't have a lot of depth to them. They are mostly part of the joke, or part of the scenery. Thursday is one exception to this, and Miss Havisham is the other. Havisham is a wonderful character, taking what Dickens created and adding to it. It's very interesting to see Havisham interacting with Pip and Estella as part of the book, and then when the scenes switches to a new chapter and away from her, she becomes even more animated. These characters know that they are characters in a book, they speak their lines and do their bit, and then they go off to live their own life. Every chapter adds more and more to Fforde's world. One way in which this is different from the first book, however, is that Fforde doesn't concentrate as much in the alternate reality that Thursday lives in. We get an update on how things are going (the Crimean War peace talks, for one thing), but for the most part, everything takes place either in the books themselves, or in the real world but with lots of literary characters bumbling about. For example, Havisham is a hoot when she gets behind the wheel of a car. If you can imagine an 18th century spinster with a lead foot, you will get the picture. It's hilarious to see, and to read about. I constantly found myself marveling at what Fforde was producing, and didn't notice that the characters were kind of plot devices. However, once again, the writing is wonderful. Fforde has a very smooth style that almost feels literary. It's almost the perfect mix between classic literature and today's fiction. Part of that is helped by the other fictional characters being around (most of them being from classical literature anyway), but a lot of it is the prose itself. The plot is interesting in itself and there are some godawful puns (those are the best kind). Some of the events in the novel seem to come out of left field, but everything ultimately has a good reason for happening, which is nice. A couple of times I groaned at how something was resolved, thinking it looked too much like writer's fiat, but then something else happened that explained exactly why that resolution occurred. Considering how twisty the book can get at times, that's no mean feat. I greatly enjoyed this novel, though not quite as much as the first. I'm not sure why that is, because it seems just as good as the first one. Maybe I would have liked a little more real-world action. In the first book, I reveled in the scenes like the Rocky Horror Picture Show-style rendition of Richard III. Those sorts of details were missing in this one (though the beginning, when Thursday goes on the talk show, is a complete scream). There were a couple of seemingly useless items. There's no reason that I can see for the mammoths to be around, other than as interesting scenery. In a book that's full of imagery, that's not usually a bad thing, but this time it seemed like they would have a purpose, and then they didn't. Fforde has shown, yet again, that he is a master at this sort of thing. He uses wonderful language, interesting images, and a great plot. Don't pick up this book for the wonderful characters, though. Fforde concentrates more on making the characters do interesting things than in actually making them interesting themselves. Except for Thursday, of course. She is the ultimate, and I love her to death. You also don't have to be afraid of not having read classic fiction and thus not being able to understand the book. While I'm sure it would be enhanced if you are familiar with it, it's not a necessity to get most of the jokes. All in all, I really felt like I was Lost in a Good Book.
Rating:
Summary: Too much fun!
Review: This sequel to The Eyre Affair is great! Thursday Next is a heroine that reminds me of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum. She is bold and brassy while managing to fumble her way in and out of serious situations. The alternative world Fforde has created is rich and exciting. Literary allusions have never been so fun!
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: Lost in a great book
Review: Lost in a good book Thursday Next uses time travel and book jumping in an impossible story of post-literary England. Every page has some form of visual invention and the jokes are even and well paced. When you start, you feel that it cannot possibly keep going and the invention on every page must flag at some point, but it doesn't. The fun never stops as our heroine battles vampires and time travelling and lives inside a post literary work. An extraordinary work of imagination coupled with a great sense of fun.
Rating: 
Summary: A Marked Improvement
Review: In my review of The Eyre Affair, I wrote that Fforde's ideas were wonderful, but lamented his poor, flat writing. Lost in a Good Book addresses this complaint - Fforde is by no means a great writer, but he seems to have learned to conceal the joints and fittings in his prose, and to produce an, admittedly utilitarian, narrative that nevertheless has flow. Dialogue has improved, characters are more interesting and believable, and the jokes are funnier. Well done, Mr. Fforde. The secret, I suspect, is that Fforde has learned to loosen up. The success of The Eyre Affair has given him the freedom and guts to take his heroine in a new direction of his own devising, instead of sticking to a semi-retelling of another book as he did in TEA. Lost in a Good Book launches Thursday Next in a new direction, which Fforde is undoubtedly planning to milk for all he can. All cynicism aside, the less structured plot suits Thursday better, and allows the readers to better enjoy the hilarity of Fforde's alternate universe. Thursday's new employers, Jurisfiction, are an stroke of genius, as is the choice of Dickens' Miss Havisham as Thursday's mentor. I approached Lost in a Good Book with very low expectations, and was handsomely rewarded. This is delightful, fluffy little book, and I'm quite looking forward to the next in the series.
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