Lost in a Good Book

Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Book
Review: In this fantastically entertaining sequel to The Eyre Affair, Thursday Next continues her job with SpecOps ensuring that order is maintained in the world of books. This is no ordinary work of fiction. The first thought I had while reading it, apart from "Man this is hilarious", was how much it reminded me of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide series. But this goes oh so much further. No classic work of fiction is safe and any famous fictional character may be deputised and added to the story.

We're talking about a parallel universe of incredible detail and vast imagination. Where dodos are pets, Tasmanian tigers are watchdogs and the annual mammoth migration is a major tourist attraction. Thursday Next is our protagonist and is able to read her way into books, yes that's right, actually INTO the story itself. But she has made some enemies who are capable of doing some pretty despicable things to cultivate their acts of revenge.

This is a wild, hilarious ride in which anything is possible, there is always something happening (nothing is mentioned for no reason), and the fun is endless. From time travel to Gravitube rides to visits through the pages of Kafka and Dickens, even the possibility of the end of the world this book's got it all.

I urge anyone who loves a good laugh and reads for the whimsical pleasure of transporting themselves via the written world to another time and place to get lost in this good book. You won't regret it for a second.

Rating:
Summary: Finally! A series that's fun and original!
Review: I accidentally found The Eyre Affair while browsing in a favorite bookstore. After the first paragraph I was hooked and bought it on the spot. After I finished it I wasn't quite sure what I'd stumbled across...meaning, it is completely different from the books I usually read. It was also fun, original entertaining, made me laugh out loud many times, and very well-written.

When I realized that Lost in a Good Book was out, and also a sequel to Eyre Affair, I couldn't wait to read it, but figured also that it would follow the usual "sequel curse" of not being as good as the first. WRONG! It's better! And now I cannot wait to get "Well of Lost Plots"!

Thank goodness for Jasper Fforde! I love writers who think outside the box, take you on a journey with the characters and work your creative mind! They are few and far between these days. And for those of you who are avid readers, especially of the classics, you will love his infusion of those characters into the world of his heroine Thursday Next!

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: 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: Science Fiction/Fantasy Literary Satire and Love Story
Review: Thursday Next is back from her triumphs in The Eyre Affair. If you have not yet read that book, please do so before Lost in a Good Book. You will be totally confused in the first half of this book if you do not.

In The Eyre Affair, Thursday Next had been working on Shakespeare-related literary crimes in London as a Special Operative when she was summoned into a special assignment with a highly classified outfit. It all related to a run-in she had with a professor while in college. The assignment left her literally flat on her back, and after recuperating she returned to her hometown to face her past and her future. She had been trying to escape from both since her unit was decimated in a terrible lost skirmish in the Crimea during which her brother was lost, and her relations with the love of her life were terminated.

While there, important manuscripts began disappearing in unexplained ways and she found herself in the middle of the investigations. Helped by unexpected interventions from outside this time and dimension, she made steady progress towards protecting Dickens and Bronte from unpopular bowlderizations.

As Lost in a Good Book opens, Thursday finds herself happily married and expecting. But dark clouds soon rain on her happiness, and she has to deal with unexpected sadness. Complications from The Eyre Affair create new problems for Thursday. In the process, she has to develop new talents and solve new problems . . . some of which threaten our very existence! Along the way, she has some unexpected help from new friends . . . including Miss Havisham from Great Expectations!

The Eyre Affair focuses on the discontinuities between what readers would like stories to say and what authors have provided.

Lost in a Good Book shifts that focus to how to read fiction in richer and more delightful ways. If you are like me, you will find yourself remembering sleepy afternoons in your childhood as you day dreamed about being a character in a book.

Thursday's personal life also takes a delicate and thoughtful look at what it means to be connected to another person and what a personal loss really is. Anyone who is grieving the loss of a loved one will find understanding and comfort in part of this story.

After you read this book, I strongly encourage you to move on to the brilliant third book in the series, The Well of Lost Plots. Although the books can be easily understood as a stand-alone effort, you will probably be more thrilled by The Well of Lost Plots if you sneak up on it by reading the other two books first.

Ultimately, these books most appeal to those who love literature as readers . . . and for whom classic characters seem like old trusted friends. Those who like science fiction, fantasy, mysteries and adventure stories will be much less pleased. Those aspects are amusing icing on the cake rather than the cake.

To me, Lost in a Good Book most seems like a continuing literary update and enhancement of Alice in Wonderland with Thursday Next as Alice.

As before, the Britain you will read about in this book differs substantially from the current one. Although the reason is never stated, I inferred that this one that has been influenced by time travelers to the detriment of Britain. The Crimean War had continued until recently since the 19th century between Britain and Imperial Russia. Wales is not part of Britain and is a people's republic that is not sympathetic to Britain. Literary debates are more important than political ones. Britain has succumbed to the military-industrial complex in ways that are usually ascribed to the U.S.A. Much technology is primitive (such as air travel by dirigibles) while other technology is very advanced (time travel, cloning of extinct animals as pets, and dimension shifting).

The overall themes of the book involve the classic struggles between the light forces of good and the dark forces of evil, against a backdrop of separated love.

The satire is layered on with a heavy hand. The names give you a sense of this. There are a number of agents who are assassinated. Their names provide clues as to what's coming next such as Kannon and Phodder. One of the new villains has a name that will make you chuckle every time you read it. The overall effect is a lot like Voltaire's Candide and occasionally has an element of Rabelais.

Regardless of any temporary drawbacks in the book to your preferences as a reader, the charming moments will easily carry you forward wondering what marvelous writing innovation next awaits you.

Plan to read this one in one sitting. It's hard to put down.

How does the book compare to The Eyre Affair and The Well of Lost Plots? I found the book to be more of a transition between those two books than a story of its own. Therefore, I thought this was the least strong book in the series to date.

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: 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.