First Among Sequels

Consistently good series. Consistently inventive series. And I suspect a rather excellent exposition on descent into madness. ( )

I think that at book five in this series, Fforde is running a little low on novel elaborations of the theme and on targets for satire. He broadens the scope here, from the plot—the (real) UK government tries to unload a stupidity surplus—to the book- and time-travel concepts—Fforde goes meta! I found it fun, if occasionally confused and inane. The plot isn't very cohesive. Perhaps Fforde's first idea ran flat, so he had to add in another plot line. ( )

Fourteen years have passed since the last book, and Thursday Next now has a teenage son, now works for a carpet company and has a side income smuggling cheese in from Wales. But all is not right in the world of books. reading rates are falling, Sherlock Holmes has and others have been killed, and they start to think that there is a serial killer loose in bookworld.

On top of that the Goliath corporation is trying to muscle in on travel to bookworld. The carpet company is a front for the real works of Spec-Ops, now working undercover, and Thursday is thrust back into the action by having to train two clones of herself and find the serial killer who wishes to stop all book series. And the icing the the cake is her son, Friday, keeps coming back in time to her to ensure that he joins Chronoguard, the time travelling organisation, who need him to join to enable him to invent time travel.

Much preferred this one to the previous book in the series. I like the way that Fforde gets the main character to flip between the real world and the bookworld. The plot is good too, with a nice amount of twists and turns, as Thursday tracks the serial killer and tries to hold family life together whilst training her clones. The literary references abound, and Fforde takes great pleasure in taking a very different perspective on the normal story line. Nearer 3.5 stars, and I think that reading this series has been worthwhile so far. ( )

The fifth book (The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco) does not exist. Preceded by The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, [The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco]. ( )

Jasper Fford’s Thursday Next novels offer literary-themed humor set in a fascinatingly odd world that’s part fantasy, part steampunk, and wholly fun. First Among Sequels invites readers to examine television’s threat to reading (also diet and exercise), with a complicated mystery of who’s doing what to books and the book universe. The time is pretty close to the present day. Bookworld is under threat. Short attention spans might destroy even Jane Austen. And Thursday next will need to save her family, her job, our literary heritage, and the day. It’s very English, a great blend of relaxing and compelling, and delightfully literary as well as being perfectly up to date. A great series for book-readers and their kin.

Disclosure: I’ve been collecting these every time I visit England, and I was thrilled to find them available here. This one’s slightly more confusing than the others, but maybe I’m just getting older and more easily confused. ( )