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You'll probably know which one if you read book #5.
Title: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
Author: Jasper Fforde
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library
Jasper Fforde has always come off to me as an author with an abundance of ideas and a desire to throw as many of them out there as he can at any time. His novels tend to be stuffed to bursting with concepts and conceits, and this can play out for better or worse, depending on the balance between whichever ones he’s chosen for a given outing. When we come to the Thursday Next series, I’ve usually found the books more set in the RealWorld, to borrow Fforde’s phrase, with SpecOps and Goliath and croquet and such, more enjoyable than the ones primarily set in the BookWorld with Thursday’s book-jumping Jurisfictional adventures.
When I took a look at the latest entry in the series, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, then, I wasn’t as excited at the arrival of a new Fforde book as I had been for, say, Shades of Gray. Fortunately, however, this run turned out to be very enjoyable. Here, we have the unpopular written version of Thursday Next, a shier, gentler version of the real one from the author-approved version of the Thursday Next series, trying to work out a mystery involving the real Thursday in a totally remade Bookworld, taken from the Great Library model of the previous books to one laid out geographically, with skirmishes and territorial squabbles between neighboring genres, and distinctive cultures within each of the genres themselves.
Over the course of the book, the written Thursday gets to interact with a lot of the characters we’ve seen in the series thus far, along with new characters, such as Whitby Jett, her Designated Love Interest, and Sprockett, a cog-based butler. The mystery takes Thursday all over the island and beyond, and it’s quite well put together and interesting. Fforde’s got a good way of doing these things, and in contrast to the previous book, this one finishes on a more complete note, I find.
The best part of reading this, though, is Fforde’s imagination and wit, ranging from low puns to riffing on fictional conventions and fellow authors to quick takes on classic works of fiction to all sorts of callbacks to previous books in the series. As such, I really wouldn’t recommend starting here; you really need to start with the first book in the series and read through to get a full enjoyment of this one, I think. He also has worked out a new way for the BookWorld to function, within a hollow globe, and it’s quite well fleshed out, too. I didn’t exactly rush out to read this one, but I’m really glad I got around to it, and seeing the written Thursday come into a character in her own right. I’ll be looking forward to the next one, for sure.
Next up: Wow, I've got a backlog of things to review... we'll see. I want to pick up again, though. I'm currently starting Steelhands, for that question.
Title: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
Author: Jasper Fforde
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library
Jasper Fforde has always come off to me as an author with an abundance of ideas and a desire to throw as many of them out there as he can at any time. His novels tend to be stuffed to bursting with concepts and conceits, and this can play out for better or worse, depending on the balance between whichever ones he’s chosen for a given outing. When we come to the Thursday Next series, I’ve usually found the books more set in the RealWorld, to borrow Fforde’s phrase, with SpecOps and Goliath and croquet and such, more enjoyable than the ones primarily set in the BookWorld with Thursday’s book-jumping Jurisfictional adventures.
When I took a look at the latest entry in the series, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, then, I wasn’t as excited at the arrival of a new Fforde book as I had been for, say, Shades of Gray. Fortunately, however, this run turned out to be very enjoyable. Here, we have the unpopular written version of Thursday Next, a shier, gentler version of the real one from the author-approved version of the Thursday Next series, trying to work out a mystery involving the real Thursday in a totally remade Bookworld, taken from the Great Library model of the previous books to one laid out geographically, with skirmishes and territorial squabbles between neighboring genres, and distinctive cultures within each of the genres themselves.
Over the course of the book, the written Thursday gets to interact with a lot of the characters we’ve seen in the series thus far, along with new characters, such as Whitby Jett, her Designated Love Interest, and Sprockett, a cog-based butler. The mystery takes Thursday all over the island and beyond, and it’s quite well put together and interesting. Fforde’s got a good way of doing these things, and in contrast to the previous book, this one finishes on a more complete note, I find.
The best part of reading this, though, is Fforde’s imagination and wit, ranging from low puns to riffing on fictional conventions and fellow authors to quick takes on classic works of fiction to all sorts of callbacks to previous books in the series. As such, I really wouldn’t recommend starting here; you really need to start with the first book in the series and read through to get a full enjoyment of this one, I think. He also has worked out a new way for the BookWorld to function, within a hollow globe, and it’s quite well fleshed out, too. I didn’t exactly rush out to read this one, but I’m really glad I got around to it, and seeing the written Thursday come into a character in her own right. I’ll be looking forward to the next one, for sure.
Next up: Wow, I've got a backlog of things to review... we'll see. I want to pick up again, though. I'm currently starting Steelhands, for that question.
