4 out of 5 Covers
Jasper Fforde is one of the most wildly inventive authors on
the market today. This marks the seventh
book in his Thursday Next series, which focues on the titular literary
detective. While the focus has been on
literature, the world of Thursday Next in one where anything can happen: time
travel, cloning, journeys into books. As
the title may in imply, this volume sees Thursday die a lot.
I thought the first four books in the series were fantastic,
especially two and three. However, books
five and six showed a distinct drop in quality, with a lack of enthusiasm and
plot threads left dangling. I very glad
that this book shows an improvement, though not quite to the same level as
those earliest volumes.
As usual, there are a lot of plot elements: Thursday getting
a new job at the local library, tracking down rare books, dealing with the
multinational corporation that wants to kill her. Then her son is fated to kill someone while
her daughter has to develop a shield before God smites their town. Oh, and she keeps dying a lot.
Fforde is an expert at world building, so that all these
fantastic elements make sense and are resolved in often unexpected and
delightful ways. Though not always; some
solutions are overly convoluted or make use of obscure information. The characterization is rich and the prose is
often a joy to read.
The one real problem I have is all the dangling plotline that
I’m still waiting to be resolved. Some
are from previous books, but the lack of resolution creates a source of
anxiety. But no matter what, I still
look forward to the next Thursday Next book.
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