Weekly Reader Thursday Next Edition: The Woman Who Died A Lot (Thursday Next Series Vol. VII) by Jasper Fforde; Average Ending To An Otherwise Stellar Series

Weekly Reader Thursday Next Edition: The Woman Who Died A Lot (Thursday Next Series Vol. VII) by Jasper Fforde; Average Ending To An Otherwise Stellar Series




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: So this is it.

We finally come to the end of The Thursday Next Series with the Woman Who Died A Lot. I must say that I haven't read a more disappointing final book to a series since well the last time I reviewed an entire series for this blog!

In the previous book One of Our Thursdays is Missing, Jasper Fforde stretched his imagination to the nth degree by throwing so many concepts and characters to the wall to see what stuck. While the plot was hard to follow, at least the creativity behind a novel set entirely in Book World and narrated by the written version of Thursday Next couldn't be ignored.

This time Fforde does the exact opposite: gives us a plot but doesn't do much in the realm of imagination and creativity. That makes this book somehow lackluster and anemic compared to the other volumes in the series.

It's not interesting that Thursday has been demoted as head of SpecsOps LiteraTech division for a younger rival/fan girl of hers. The plot line of the old veteran vs. the young upstart has been done to death and unfortunately Fforde does little with it except have Thursday act snippy and sarcastic to the new chief, Phoebe Smalls.

Thursday's animosity towards the sinister Goliath Corporation is a regular theme throughout the series and in the past Goliath has pulled some shady schemes and dealings that even the most hardline CEO would step back. But here Goliath is little more than a mere presence with its representatives making threats, searching for antique volumes, and getting rich off of other's suffering. In other words they went from being a clever satire of corrupt corporations to being just a corrupt corporation.

And please no more of the “Parent vs.Teenage Children” conflict. We did not come here to read about Thursday's daughter, Tuesday's boyfriend troubles or her son, Friday's rivalry with a classmate who is also Tuesday's boyfriend. We came here for clever literary sendups, brilliant wordplay, and to read about Thursday cleverly outsmarting her antagonists. Instead Fforde treats his characters like a tongue-in-cheek rerun of Modern Family.

Speaking of literary sendups. In what amounted to the book’s finale, Fforde committed the biggest sin of all: Book World is nowhere to be found! Thursday does not visit nor do any of the characters, many of whom are her closest friends, communicate with her. This explanation is hand waved by saying Thursday suffered a head injury in the previous book that prevents her from visiting Book World. So its characters are reduced to only one Wingco, an RAF pilot clearly based on Commander Biggles who is trying to find his way into the world of Dark Reading Matter, in which characters float along in imagination before they are put to paper. Other than that,Thursday doesn't visit abd barely talks about her Book World friends like Col. and Melanie Bradshaw, Jane and Edward Rochester, Emperor Zhark, Written Thursday, or the Cat formerly known as Cheshire.

No no no! The Thursday Next Series is supposed to be the literary equivalent of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Wreck It Ralph!
Depriving Thursday of that setting which was so integral to the other volumes is like Eddie Valiant being unable to visit Toon Town, Ralph locked inside his game and not being allowed to see into other games, or depriving Special Agent Dale Cooper of Twin Peaks. The setting is so brilliant and unique and the protagonist is such a strong part of that brilliant uniqueness. They belong to that world and the world belongs to them. To lose that world is losing what made the series so great in the first place.

Part of the fun of the series has always been the literary references and cameos and the relationship between a book, the author, and the reader. It's an almost symbiotic relationship in which the author creates the world, the book inhabits the world, and the reader imagines the world. Fforde understood this.
He understood that each book that is written has its own tiny universe and the Reader is the spark that brings it to life. Here that ideal is lost to a plot that pays little tribute to that relationship and is instead a paint-by-numbers action storyline.

The book isn't all bad however. There are some great touches and when the book focuses on them, it's pretty decent. Thursday accepts the job as Chief Librarian of Swindon's Fatsos-All-You-Can-Eat-Drinks-Not-Included Library. It’s hardly the standard quiet public library with story hours, computer labs, and knitting classes, as the assault rifle that Thursday packs every morning can attest. Instead, this is a library in which patrons would literally kill for the latest volume and staff are licensed to keep the peace by any means necessary. This concept cleverly calls back to The Eyre Affair as we learned that people take art and literature so seriously that they shed blood over it. In fact, the SpecOps organizations have specific divisions that deal with art and literature crimes. So it makes sense that librarians would be armed to the teeth against patrons who violently argue whether Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays, are driven to make Enid Blyton's England into a reality, or take their hatred or love for romance novelist Daphne Farquitt to disturbing levels.

The title comes from the fact that Goliath keeps sending synthetics to replace Thursday. Thursday and her husband, Landen have become so used to it that they create code phrases so Landen knows if the Thursday knows he is talking to his wife. If she doesn't respond, Landen calls Spec Ops and the synthetic is removed. Some of the chapters are even cleverly told from the point of view of the Synthetic Thursdays so the Reader has to be on guard for a sudden change in narrator.


There is also some Pythonesque brilliance as Swindon prepares for a Smiting from the Supreme Deity. Prophecies predict that it will be happening the following Monday at 12 PM on the button. (Hmm, I never knew that prophecies were that specific. Well except Agnes Nutter’s.) So the citizens do everything that they can to prevent it or at least to divert it so less people get hurt. Everything from creating a Smite Shield to finding a righteous man to stand in the middle of a group of sinners so the Supreme Deity would be unable to strike one of their own followers.

Once you get past the tedious angsty parent and teenage arguments, Tuesday and Friday are actually well written. Tuesday is a young genius who is instrumental in creating the Smiting Shield and studies Dark Reading Matter. Friday is a more action oriented character who is trying to fight a destiny as someone who will murder a classmate and cause a chain reaction that could bring about the end of the Universe (provided the Smiting isn't successful of course).

In fact it's very possible that Fforde could later write a spin off series that star the daring Friday alongside the cerebral Tuesday as a crime fighting/time traveling duo.

With Friday's storyline, Fforde opens up the theme that actions have consequences and that even when some intentions are good, they can still lead to problems later. Through much of the series, the Chronoguard has been seen as antagonists who are secretive, malicious, and commit terrible actions such as going back in time and erasing enemies from existence like Thursday's father and temporarily her husband, Landen.

In First Among Sequels, Friday manages to alter the time stream so that Chronoguard was never created.
They aren't able to mess with time and exiles are returned. In a show of the Chronoguard 's diminished role, Thursday's father who was a strong presence in the first four books is relegated in the later books to mere cameos as the stereotypical befuddled retiree. (His role as the eccentric destiny-spewing time traveler is taken over by his grandson, Friday.)

While getting rid of the Chronoguard removes the world of one pest, unfortunately leaving Goliath behind, this book reveals the unintended consequences of such an action. Several people no longer will achieve brilliance in a career in time travel in which they visited and studied different time periods, changed history,saved the future, committed many heroic acts, and were promoted for their efforts. Instead, there are many young people who were once promising time travelers and whose futures are now reduced to working in unsatisfactory minimum wage jobs and settling into unhappy marriages, piles of debt, and general languidness before dying of natural causes. The worst part is these former future Chronoguard members receive Letters of Destiny and on some level retain memories of their once exciting illustrious careers in which they achieved greatness. Now they are stuck in a meaningless existence despairing a destiny that they remember but now can never have.


Another dramatic subplot is that of Jenny, the third child of the Park-Laine-Next family or rather the nonexistent daughter of the Park-Laine-Next family. She is actually a false memory implanted by Aornis Hades, supervillain Acheron Hades' bitch of a sister, a mnemenomorph who specializes in confusing her antagonists with false memories.

It is heartbreaking as Thursday and the other family members are filled with memories of an adorable little girl and bratty kid sister and they have to be reminded constantly that no she is not at a friend's house or at school, she isn't real. Aornis gets a sadistic laugh out of watching the family remember Jenny, wonder where she is, and are anguished when they are told she doesn't exist. Aornis rubs further salt into the gaping wound by removing their memories of the revelation so they remember Jenny and have to be told the truth again and again.

The Jenny subplot carries over into the final three Thursday Next books. Unfortunately, it is resolved in a ridiculously deus ex machina fashion in which a new character suddenly arrives and provides the solution with no real resolution to the character's identity, or reason for why this character exists or why she helped the Next family. There are a couple of theories but they are never outright stated so they just remain theories.

In fact deus ex machina is one of the more annoying tropes that appears in this book. In the final pages, one villain who had been present since The Eyre Affair is removed in the most ridiculously over the top fashion. In a book deprived of the imagination from the previous volumes, the villain's death lacks in originality. It's like you read about a character building up for six books for a climactic battle that never happens in book seven. It's out of nowhere and derivative. I feel like instead of giving his series a great send off, Jasper Fforde just wanted it to end.


However, the problems with The Woman Who Died A Lot should not distract from what a wonderful series The Thursday Next series in general. Even their worst books are still great in terms of originality and quality. As a whole, the series is brilliant, imaginative, original and is cleverly written and brilliantly characterized. That's why The Thursday Next Series is among the greatest book series of all time.