Weekly Reader Thursday Next Edition: One of Our Thursdays is Missing (The Thursday Next Series Vol. VI) by Jasper Fforde; Penultimate Thursday Next Book Stretches The Boundaries of Imagination and Weirdness
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: I have a theory about the final three Thursday Next books. I think after First Among Sequels was published, someone at Penguin Books doubted that Jasper Fforde couldn't make the series any weirder.
In response, Fforde said “Hold my Jurisfiction Travel Book” and thus One of Our Thursdays is Missing was written or at least that's the only explanation that I can give for this book that is two-thirds weirdness and imagination with less than a third of an understandable plot.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Once you get this far in the Thursday Next Series, by this time, you know normal is not a thing here. With each volume, Fforde stretches his imagination even further showing that he is among the most creative of writers. Just know that if you are looking for something resembling coherence or understanding, by this time well….you should have stopped reading after The Eyre Affair.
To start off with the narrator is not Thursday Next, but Thursday Next. In the previous book, First Among Sequels, it is revealed that Thursday's exploits have been immortalized into fiction. The narrator of One Of Our Thursdays is Missing is the Written Thursday, the star of the books-within-the-books.
Because this Thursday is technically new, she is considered a rookie neophyte more excitable and curious than the more jaded literary detective that we know and love. This Thursday makes rookie mistakes like while on assignment such as leaving her book in charge of a newly created Generic who runs off with her troll boyfriend (fantasy troll not Internet), thereby leaving her book protagonist-less and the other characters with nothing to do and ready to revolt.
The great news for fans of the Book World setting of the previous books will be glad to know that except for a few incidental scenes, this book is almost set entirely in the Book World.
Fforde takes advantage of this setting by doing clever things with it. One of the best chapters has the landscape of Book World change from a Great Library to a physical world sectioned off into various fictional lands such as Fantasy, Mystery, Adventure, Conspiracy Theories, and Excuses For Why You Didn't Do Your Homework. Thursday lives in the Speculative Fantasy area.
The opening featuring the transformation of the New Book World is jaw dropping as Thursday and Co. encounter a fuller external landscape of green grass, blue skies, clear water, and newly created books floating in the sky like clouds waiting to land in their new home, whatever genre that is.
The opening map is a parody of and tribute to the maps found in Historical Fiction and Fantasy Novels with areas like School Essays marked and certain authors like Enid Blyton and Jane Austen getting their own towns and islands on the landscape.
There are some really fun elements that play on the various genres as the written Thursday solves mysteries by visiting such genres as Suspense and Conspiracy Theories. The latter section is particularly clever as Written Thursday encounters Bigfoot, Reptilian Shapeshifter Overlords, and more Elvi than she knows what to do with.
Being set in Book World means that the book falls under Book World Logic which works about as well as Wonderland Logic: completely insane, unpredictable, and nonsensical. Almost no logic at all.
Sometimes this logic purposely contradicts the previous books in the Thursday Next Series. Since the characters in the Thursday book-within-a-book are former Generics playing the roles in the book, they behave like actors playing a role.
The character playing Thursday's father is not the sweet befuddled time traveler that we saw in the previous books. Instead he is a hammy primadonna who treats Written Thursday like an underling. Acheron Hades is not the feared villain from the Eyre Affair. Instead he is an introverted gentleman who writes bad poetry. Even Written Thursday is different from her Real World Counterpart. She is single, being granted a Designated Love Interest, and still wears the hippy clothes that she wore in First Among Sequels.
There are also some brilliant new characters added. The most prominent is Sprockett, a robot butler (“Everyone needs a butler.”). Written Thursday rescues him from an anti-robot crowd and he serves as a sidekick, advisor, straight man, and a best friend to the detective. Similar to Lola and Randolph, the Generics from The Well of Lost Plots much of the humor derives from him discovering emotions and learning what it means to be alive. He is the star of a failed detective series about a robot mystery solver that was rejected because he didn't have enough emotion. He was in fear of being destroyed “but only in the context that to be destroyed would not give (him) the opportunity to serve cocktails.”
The plot, such as it is, involves Written Thursday mediating in a war among various genres including Religious Dogma and Racy Smut as well as receiving word that the Real Thursday is missing from her home in Real Swindon.
There are some weird moments such as Thursday and Sprockett investigating the crash of a literary character leaving behind only nonsensical words and an ISBN number. She has to rely on a clue provided by a rejected book and has to communicate with its author via telepathy, dream visitation, or impersonating Real Thursday in her world.
The plot sometimes gets too confusing, particularly during the climax when Written Thursday encounters Real Thursday's nonexistent daughter, Jenny who may or may not be preventing Written Thursday from finding the real woman or is testing her heroism or something. Also, the previous book set up a situation concerning Thursday's whereabouts but it is not followed. This is rather irritating because First Among Sequels began an interesting plot thread that is not followed in this or the next book suggesting that with the final three books in the series, Fforde made things up as he went along and dropped angles willy-nilly.
One of Our Thursdays is Missing stretches Fforde’s imagination to infinity. While things can get weird and confusing, sometimes when it comes to Jasper Fforde, then it is best just to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
There are also some brilliant new characters added. The most prominent is Sprockett, a robot butler (“Everyone needs a butler.”). Written Thursday rescues him from an anti-robot crowd and he serves as a sidekick, advisor, straight man, and a best friend to the detective. Similar to Lola and Randolph, the Generics from The Well of Lost Plots much of the humor derives from him discovering emotions and learning what it means to be alive. He is the star of a failed detective series about a robot mystery solver that was rejected because he didn't have enough emotion. He was in fear of being destroyed “but only in the context that to be destroyed would not give (him) the opportunity to serve cocktails.”
The plot, such as it is, involves Written Thursday mediating in a war among various genres including Religious Dogma and Racy Smut as well as receiving word that the Real Thursday is missing from her home in Real Swindon.
There are some weird moments such as Thursday and Sprockett investigating the crash of a literary character leaving behind only nonsensical words and an ISBN number. She has to rely on a clue provided by a rejected book and has to communicate with its author via telepathy, dream visitation, or impersonating Real Thursday in her world.
The plot sometimes gets too confusing, particularly during the climax when Written Thursday encounters Real Thursday's nonexistent daughter, Jenny who may or may not be preventing Written Thursday from finding the real woman or is testing her heroism or something. Also, the previous book set up a situation concerning Thursday's whereabouts but it is not followed. This is rather irritating because First Among Sequels began an interesting plot thread that is not followed in this or the next book suggesting that with the final three books in the series, Fforde made things up as he went along and dropped angles willy-nilly.
One of Our Thursdays is Missing stretches Fforde’s imagination to infinity. While things can get weird and confusing, sometimes when it comes to Jasper Fforde, then it is best just to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
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