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#5 Platform - First Among Sequels
Jan. 31st, 2008 09:32 pmThis book has more Thursdays than you can shake a stick at.
Book #4: First Among Sequels
Author: Jasper Fforde
Provenance: Received as a birthday present last year from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kiskeky
The Thursday Next series, and indeed Fforde's writing in general, has a lot of good ideas and interesting twists on regular narrative concepts. The problem is, generally, that there are too many ideas floating around, and I often feel when reading them that it'd be nice to get to explore them further and with more separation, and thus have fewer of them in any given book.
First Among Sequels is no exception; there's an awful amount of stuff going on here. The book is set 14 years after the end of Something Rotten, and the first third plus of the book basically just detailing all of the changes in the world since the end of that one. Admittedly, there's a bunch of setup for later events interwoven into telling you the state of the world, but it's still basically that. SpecOps has been disbanded, and most of the people from there are working at a carpet store; reading rates have fallen sharply; the Chronoguard is worried about finding out the method of time travel, etc. There's a lot.
Once everything gels, though, it's pretty fun. The first half of the book took a long time to read, but the second half was pretty fast and enjoyable. Fforde's writing style is, as ever, witty and interestingly described, and there are the regular assortment of literary allusions and puns. The plot ends on a big cliffhanger, which, considering the pacing of the book, was a bit annoying, but it wasn't that terrible. The different versions of Thursday were very interesting, as well.
Overall, not my favorite book in the series, but still quite enjoyable. It'd help to read the previous ones soon before reading this one, I think (I had to check up on stuff a couple of times), but probably only a general understanding would be enough to get a lot of it. I do rather want the next one now, though.
Next up: The Harsh Cry of the Heron. A bit more not quite Japan.
Book #4: First Among Sequels
Author: Jasper Fforde
Provenance: Received as a birthday present last year from
kiskekyThe Thursday Next series, and indeed Fforde's writing in general, has a lot of good ideas and interesting twists on regular narrative concepts. The problem is, generally, that there are too many ideas floating around, and I often feel when reading them that it'd be nice to get to explore them further and with more separation, and thus have fewer of them in any given book.
First Among Sequels is no exception; there's an awful amount of stuff going on here. The book is set 14 years after the end of Something Rotten, and the first third plus of the book basically just detailing all of the changes in the world since the end of that one. Admittedly, there's a bunch of setup for later events interwoven into telling you the state of the world, but it's still basically that. SpecOps has been disbanded, and most of the people from there are working at a carpet store; reading rates have fallen sharply; the Chronoguard is worried about finding out the method of time travel, etc. There's a lot.
Once everything gels, though, it's pretty fun. The first half of the book took a long time to read, but the second half was pretty fast and enjoyable. Fforde's writing style is, as ever, witty and interestingly described, and there are the regular assortment of literary allusions and puns. The plot ends on a big cliffhanger, which, considering the pacing of the book, was a bit annoying, but it wasn't that terrible. The different versions of Thursday were very interesting, as well.
Overall, not my favorite book in the series, but still quite enjoyable. It'd help to read the previous ones soon before reading this one, I think (I had to check up on stuff a couple of times), but probably only a general understanding would be enough to get a lot of it. I do rather want the next one now, though.
Next up: The Harsh Cry of the Heron. A bit more not quite Japan.
