The Midnight Library by Matt Haig; 1,000th Blog Post is About a Captivating Enchanting Library of Lives

 

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig; 1,000th Blog Post is About a Captivating Enchanting Library of Lives

By Julie Sara Porter 

Spoilers: Wow, 1,000th blog post! 9 years! It has been quite a ride! I have been a Book Reviewer longer than I have been anything else and I love it! 

There have been so many authors, so many books, and so many stories that I shared. I feel like I have lived thousands of lives vicariously. So it is fitting that my thousandth review should be The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, a Contemporary Fantasy novel about a library that tells of several potential lives of one woman. 

Nora Seed attempts to take her own life. When she wakes up, she finds herself inside The Midnight Library. The librarian, Mrs. Elm tells her that it is filled with books that represent the various lives that Nora lived had she made different choices. All she has to do is choose one and she is transported to become that particular Nora in that particular reality.

This book has an amazing concept with wonderful themes of choice, regret, memory, loss, possibility, personal happiness, and finding one's true path. The library itself is filled with an endless collection of books, lives, that are untitled and unmarked. They seem to convey sameness and monotony, but instead the stories inside provide a variety of lives with different situations, experiences, and memories.

Nora is the right character for something like this to happen (even if her surname, Seed, and Mrs. Elm’s names are a bit on the nose.) Nora works at a music store and despairs over missed opportunities and lost career paths. She has broken romantic relationships and is estranged from family members. Her life is just going through the motions and feeling like she isn't a part of anything. She feels that her life is one of past regret and barely living in the present.

The lives take Nora through various situations. In many ways, this book is similar to the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, which presents another woman entering various realities based on different worlds and choices. The realities come from different initial choices. Then those choices result in other outcomes. Some good, some bad but eventually lead to her becoming a more sagacious and perceptive person because of her experience with them.

Nora becomes a pub owner, animal rescue shelter worker, an Olympic swimmer turned public speaker, rock star, climate change scientist, and philosophy professor among other careers. Her family and love life fill the gamut from single, cohabitating, in romantic relationships, married, divorced, to widowed. Her friends are still in touch, grown apart, connected on social media, lost because of breakups, or are completely out of her life.

She is childless, had various miscarriages, has one or two children. She has plenty of pets, allergic to animals, or had pets that died. Her parents are divorced, widowed, still together, both dead, or out of her life. Her brother is estranged from her, supporting her, acting as her manager, alive, or dead. She can be healthy and destined to live a long life, sickly and dying, physically healthy but suffering from various psychiatric disorders, or caught in a serious catastrophic accident.

It's exhausting and also exhilarating keeping track of the various realities, moving along Nora’s life paths, understanding the changes, and finding out the knowledge and wisdom that she obtains from them. Each reality is different but tells a complete beautiful story of a woman receiving the opportunity to explore all of her potential lives to find the one that fulfills her the most.

That is the secret to the various realities. All of them have positive and negative aspects. One where she is rich and famous could also see her as depressed and suicidal. One where she married an ex boyfriend that she still has feelings for gives her lots of friends but various marital problems. 

One where she travels and sees many great places reveals that she experiences them alone. Another where she works for important humanitarian causes puts her in Nihilistic despair when she believes that nothing will improve. Even when she is in a mostly happy reality, there is something that she lost or gave up on. Even when a possibility leads to negative results, she can find something positive inside it. 

The point of the novel is not to find the perfect life or the life where Nora left the biggest impact. It's to find the possibilities that surround her and in turn us. It's for all of us to recognize the hardships and appreciate the pleasures. To find meaning and existence in living no matter the reality. To find everything instead of nothing. In my case, to find the meaning and possibility that exists in every story. All 1,000 of them.

Britannia Rises by Russell Dumper; Involved Relevant AU Science Fiction Where Britain Still Rules The Waves

 Britannia Rises by Russell Dumper; Involved and Relevant AU Science Fiction Where Britain Still Rules The Waves

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

Spoilers: I did not plan this but I suppose that it is most appropriate to review Britannia Rises by Russell Dumper for Independence Day weekend. This Alternate Universe Science Fiction novel has an involved and sweeping plot that is surprisingly relevant in modern United States where this once Democratic Republic is transforming into something else entirely.

In this timeline, The British Empire never ended. The United States lost the Revolutionary War and many other countries like India, Hong Kong, and South Africa are still under their leadership. In fact, they are interested in expanding by seizing more countries such as Venezuela and Nepal. They are faced with challenges from other superpowers like China, USSR (yes they are still around and intact), and The European Union, but are also feeling the pangs of rebellion from within. There are rebellious factions like the Dayak, a resistance group with which the Nepalese branch is highly active in this volume.

With a plot this wide reaching and complex, there are going to be various characters who are affected and this book covers such diverse characters and perspectives. Jamie Bayston is a university student who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time and is forced to go into hiding. Edward McLaughlin is an American operative who crosses paths with young Bayston and ends up becoming his protector. Trevor Layttle is a German K6 agent whose security investigation takes him to higher and more conspiratorial levels. King Alfred is showing signs of mental decline and is preoccupied with potential foreign invasions, so his avaricious manipulative older son, Prince Leopold and his weak willed apathetic younger son, Prince Christian acquire the regency for the good of the kingdom and their father, so they say. Letitia Pearl leaves her native Canada for Nepal to enlist in the Dayak and is involved in key battles. Bob Royce is a career soldier whose assignment in Nepal allegiances with more violent soldiers cause him to question his own loyalty and humanity.

This is one of those books that scarily lines up with real life. I don’t know if Dumper was intentionally thinking of the current situation in the United States but it’s definitely suggestive of these times. Ironically as I am reading a book about a fictional British Empire strengthening their hold so other countries don’t gain their freedom, the United States may be in the process of losing theirs but not by outside forces but from our own government taking on a more Authoritarian Fascistic rule. 

This book shows what happens when the people surrender their will to a dictatorial society. It’s in the grand tradition of many Science Fiction works like 1984, Handmaid’s Tale, Idiocracy, CSA: Confederate States of America, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 and the various books that I reviewed in the past eight years. They take a far off future or alternate history to comment on the situations that are happening now. 

The parallels can be seen. King Alfred, an Authoritarian despot who is clearly showing signs of mental instability has a lot in common with Donald Trump (with a lot of King Charles thrown in). The actions by his inner circle notably Prince Leopold are similar to oligarchs like Elon Musk and the Heritage Foundation who use the current Administration, narcissistic President, and his gullible followers to feed their own ambition. 

The experiences from Jamie Bayston, Letitia Pearl, Bob Royce and Trevor Layttle can be clearly seen today by people who are suffering from these actions in one way or another. All anyone has to do is read or watch the news and find out what’s happening to various groups like immigrants. LGBT+ people, Liberals, academics, investigative reporters, and voters, even those who once followed the current regime and have grown to regret it. Of course the organized protests such as No Kings certainly cause one to think along certain terms. 

We can all see the similarities especially when we are living inside them. The actions of the characters might be how we would act in some ways. We might be Bayston just a naive part of things until it hits us personally. We might be people like MacLaughlin or Pearl, people whose grief transformed into anger and then action against the system that caused it. We might be Layttle who learn too much and become targets because we shared that knowledge with others. We might be Royce those who followed the system until our conscience got in the way. 

We might be many of the unnamed unknown characters on the outside, average ordinary people, immigrants and citizens that find our lives irrevocably changed by people who take sadistic unconscionable delight in the suffering of others. Even those who once voted for it and actively campaigned for this regime will soon suffer under it. We all will just some of us will realize it quicker than others. 

While this is a relevant novel, it’s not a political tract. It is filled with depth in characters and situations that tell a suspenseful thrilling story. There are plenty of moments that will make the Reader nod in sympathy, rage in anger, or applaud wildly. Royce’s transition from loyal soldier to potential rebel is very real as he mentally shows unease during other soldiers’s boastful dark humor over what they will do to their victims. It then multiplies as those words and jokes become depraved actions and he has to rationalize what they did with what he allowed to happen. 

MacLaughlin and Bayston’s relationship is also a highlight. MacLaughlin gives the younger man pointers on how to survive on the run so this naive sheltered middle class kid shows the potential to become a street smart gun toting fighter. The moment where Bayston learns that he lost everything that he once held dear is predicted but no less heart wrenching as the boy realizes that he is unable to go home. It will be a tough road with plenty of sacrifices, more violence, and may only result in mere pin pricks against those in charge. Bayston has to decide if he is ready for it. 

Britannia Rises is not only a great example of Alternate Universe Science Fiction. It is very relatable to this universe’s current events. 

Weekly Reader: Alternate Warriors Edited by Mike Resnick; Alternate Universe Anthology Creates Interesting and Violent Scenarios

Weekly Reader: Alternate Warriors Edited by Mike Resnick; Alternate Universe Anthology Creates Interesting and Violent Scenarios

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews


PopSugar Reading Challenge: An anthology

Spoilers: Alternate histories are fun to speculate upon wondering if something had been ever so slightly altered, could things have been different? Many books are written about the possibilities of the Nazis winning WWII or the Confederate states remaining separated from the Union after the Civil War. So many possibilities can be entertained. What if Lee Harvey Oswald missed? What if the Manson Family knocked on the wrong door instead of Sharon Tate's home? What if The Beatles never formed? What if Princess Diana lived to see her sons get married? What if Hilary Clinton never married Bill or won the last election? What if any other President had won instead of the ones that did?


Science Fiction authors have entertained various possibilities in this genre and the projected time streams are as varied as the divergant points in history. Science Fiction author and editor, Mike Resnick, edited a series of anthologies that offer these intriguing possibilities. The first (and best) Alternate Presidents gives various failed candidates a chance to grace the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Another book in the series is Alternate Warriors. The premise is that various figures known for their pacificism, or nonviolent displays of civil disobedience now stop turning the other cheek and instead start picking up guns and swords. These characters embrace more violent natures in stories that open up very dark, violent, fascinating possibilities in history.


The best stories are:


"Because Thou Lovest a Burning Ground" by Michael P. Kube-McDowell- Alternate warrior: Mohandas K. Mahatma Gandhi

In our timeline, Gandhi was known for his pacifistic nature and acts of civil disobedience against English colonialism. This story suggests what would have happened if he had a different guide in his path: Kali, the Hindu Goddess of Death and Retribution. The plot supposed that Gandhi, a young medical student is mentored by Jafir, the remnant of the Thuggee cult that worshipped Kali. Gandhi is enticed by the Thuggees's violent nature to strangle their enemies without remorse. He is also driven by an India in which natives are forced to be educated in English, refused admission to certain studies, and villages are destroyed by English soldiers for the slightest provocation. While the Thuggee are written as a violent bunch, it is easy to see why Gandhi would use violence against violence. Using his leadership skills and cult of personality, the story ends on a bone chilling note when Gandhi is surrounded by hundreds of Thuggee followers ready to meet bloodshed with bloodshed.


"Extreme Feminism" by Nicholas DiChario-Alternate warrior: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Victoria Woodhull

A common thread in these stories are that as bad as the situations are in reality, the stories are far worse. Certain groups are treated even worse (if such a thing could be possible) causing those who speak out with little choice but to react with violence, creating an even worse cycle of violence in which history can never climb out from. This story presents the possibility of how women's status was changed if Abraham Lincoln was assassinated not by John Wilkes Booth but by Mary E. Surratt (in reality, the owner of boarding house in which Booth stayed. She was the only female conspirator in the Lincoln assassination that was executed. This story implies that Surratt acted alone.) Since it was a woman that assassinated the President, the men in charge of law and politics decided that all women must be punished. They are forced by law to wear constricting bodices, petticoats, corsets and bonnets that cover all parts of the body and limit movement and breathing. ("A comfortable woman is a dangerous woman," they reason.) They are unable to purchase anything including guns without written consent from their husbands. As for the right to vote, well that's never going to happen.

Besides the conflicts between the feminists like Susan B. Anthony and the male dominated society, there is also conflict between the feminists themselves. There are the older ones like Anthony who prefer to fight with words and harmless stunts to get attention, like women firing guns into the air after Anthony makes a speech. Then there are the younger ones like Victoria Woodhull, who call themselves "Extreme Feminists" and prefer to commit violent acts like shooting and kidnapping male soldiers. The violent and nonviolent approaches go beyond either Anthony or Woodhull's expectations when a shootout ends on a bloody note for the feminists but gives Anthony the chance to unleash the power she longs for and as the narration tells us: "what no woman ever had a choice."


"The Firebringers" by David Gerrold-Alternate warrior: Various Hollywood icons including Gregory Peck, Ronald Reagan, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Bob Hope, Van Johnson, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy

In the introduction, Resnick describes author, David Gerrold's career as a Hollywood screenwriter allowed him to think big. This story proves that. The basic premise is that the atomic bomb that the Americans sent is not dropped in Japan, but in Germany. Besides the change in direction, there is also a change in personnel. The flight crew on this fatal trip is comprised of Hollywood actors including Gregory Peck, Ronald Reagan, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney.

The characters are amalgams of their real selves and the characters that they played, the personas more known to the public. The story is littered with inside references making it one of the cleverest stories in the anthology. There are several references to their movies and lives. Bogart talks about returning to Morocco and reopen his cafe (referencing Casablanca). Lieutenants Laurel and Hardy were piano movers before the war (like in their Academy Award winning short, The Music Box). Cagney, the narrator writes in first person normally but his dialogue is punctuated "Oh..uh ah," and other fillers mimicking every comedian's impression of him ever.

By far the strongest characters are Colonals Gregory Peck and Ronald Reagan, also playing their types. Channeling his future (real life) career as President during the last days of the Cold War, Reagan describes the Germans as an "evil empire" and is in favor of bombing them sky high. Peck however, speaks in the voice of his character, Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird and tries to appeal to the crew's decency and basic humanity. This story is also one of the few in the anthology which doesn't end in violence, and insteads shows that cooler heads can prevail.



"The Cold Warrior" by Jack C. Haldeman II-Alternate warrior: Marilyn Monroe

Another Hollywood performer taking a violent turn in this anthology, is Marilyn Monroe. Though unlike the boys in "The Firebringers", she is acting by her lonesome self. This story reveals that this alternate Marilyn is more than capable of doing just that.

While she is still an actress in this story, Monroe has more important things in mind like revenge against Fidel Castro after a failed romance with Castro's partner, Che Guevera. Monroe uses her looks, charisma, and various other attributes to spy on such notables as Castro, Jimmy Hoffa, the Mafia, CIA, and just about anyone else in her way. The real Monroe was considered a soft spoken, troubled, insecure actress who had been victimized by a Hollywood patriarchal system, a drug addiction, and her own worries about her screen image. This Monroe is a hard edged, cynical, tough talking spy/assassin who uses any man in her way before shooting him. Like many other characters in these stories, this story opens up the dark side that Monroe may have unleashed if given the chance.


"One by One" by Beth Meacham-Alternate warrior: Tecumseh

Most of the stories feature the direct cause of the violence, the moment when the character embraces their dark sides. This story is the effect, what happens 200 years after Tecumseh, the Prophet's dream united the various tribes into the Shawnee Alliance and to fight a continuous war against their white invaders.

The world that is portrayed is the 1960's during this ongoing endless conflict when Walks Softly, a young woman seeking vengeance for the deaths of her father and brother, joins the terrorist organization that attacks the whites only towns. There are many moments of Native Americans striking back on their foes such as Ed Ames recreating the tomahawk throwing incident on the Tonight Show. However, the real life incident involved Ames throwing the tomahawk at a drawing's groin with some off-color harmless jokes from Carson. In this time stream, an angry Ames grieving over the death of his nephew, takes offense at Carson's humor and silences the talk show host but good, on live television.

This intense short story climaxes in a moment when Walks Softly has to make the decision to save a white childhood friend or to commit the violence that she is trained to do. The ending reveals the conditioning that this war has brought when people on both sides only see an enemy and not a human being and revenge and rage are all that they live for.


"Death of a Dream" by Jack C. Haldeman II-Alternate warrior: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gets the focus of two stories. The first Lawrence Schimel's "Taking Action", shows King tortured by dreams but not his famous one of equality. Instead, they are prophetic dreams of the Anita Hill testimony before Congress and the Rodney King beating and various other scenes of racism. (One can only imagine that if the story were updated how many more dreams he would have including Travyon Martin, Michael Brown, Ahmoud Arbery, the South Carolina church shootings and so on.)

The better story is Haldeman's "Death of a Dream." This depicts a King still alive in 1975, but an embittered, angry King who is dying of cancer and is no longer the golden voiced idealist who united all people under his dream. Instead he never got to give his speech. In this version of events, he was openly denounced by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Most of the co-leaders of the Civil Rights Movement withdrew their allegiances with King and Malcom X went to prison for successfully assasinating Alabama Gov. George Wallace Segregation continues and spreads throughout the entire United States. The Civil Rights bill is rejected. African-Americans are denied the right to vote and maybe forced to return to Africa.

This is the most pessimistic of the stories featuring a character with nothing left to lose. King knows he's going to die, so he is doing the only thing that he has left taking the President of the United States (former Chicago mayor), Richard J. Daley with him. Even though it's less than five pages, it shows what happens when the fight is gone and all the warrior has left is bitterness, exhaustion, and vengeance.


Alternate Warriors takes these characters down a dark side. While their motives are understandable, often driven by prejudice, hatred, or vengeance, these stories retroactively make their real life actions more admirable. They could have easily chosen violence and walked down these dark paths, but they didn't. Instead, they chose to fight with words, talents, resistance, and bloodless action. In doing so, they became the real heroes.

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.

Weekly Reader: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead: A Strange But Thrilling Alternate Universe Trip From Bondage To Freedom

Weekly Reader: The Underground Railroad By Colson Whitehead: A Strange But Thrilling Alternate Universe Trip From Bondage To Freedom
By Julie Sara Porter,
Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: I must admit as a child when I heard the term "The Underground Railroad," I took it literally. I imagined a literal train underneath the ground in which slaves escaped as freed blacks and white abolitionists conducted the actual trains to the North. Of course the term is figurative and the Underground Railroad was a fascinating history of people both white and black who took chances and saved lives challenging the Fugitive Slave Laws. But I never forgot my earlier naivete about picturing an actual train underground.

Colson Whitehead's thrilling alternate history of the Underground Railroad captured that childhood image by also taking the concept of "The Underground Railroad" literally by making it an actual rail system underground. (In fact one character scoffs at the idea that the term is metaphoric playing off on the Real-world system.) The book details the journey of Cora, an escaped slave as she encounters the Railroad on her journey towards the North into freedom.

Cora escapes with a fellow slave named Caesar, following the path of Cora's mother Mabel, who had earlier escaped without her. On their run to freedom, Cora kills a teenage boy who intends to capture her. Fearing retribution from the white community because of the boy's death, Cora and Caesar encounter an abolitionist who leads them to the first train stop on the Underground Railroad.

The book is exciting and filled with tension as Cora and Caesar encounter various difficulties at each stop. In South Carolina, they learn of a conspiracy to sterilize black women and render black men with syphilis (shades of the infamous Tuskegee Experiments before they appeared in the real timeline in the early 20th century). Before they can escape, the two are separated and Cora travels alone.
In Indiana, Cora encounters a farm run by escaped slaves and freed men. However, the freed men fear retaliation so they alert the slave catchers of the former slaves' presences. Each chapter Cora encounters a new struggle, but manages to escape using her strength, perseverance, and assistance from the Railroad's network of abolitionist, freed blacks, and conductors.

Cora is a three-dimensional protagonist as she makes her way to Freedom. She is fundamentally flawed such as her hatred for her mother who she feels abandoned her. She also is someone who is filled with a deep mistrust of most people, even the ones who are trying to help her, because of earlier abuse and sexual assault during her slavery days. It is to be expected that someone who had been through such a hard time would not find it easy to trust people. As she continues to run towards freedom, Cora also regains some of her faith and trust in others accepting help from those who offer it such as from Martin, a kindly abolitionist who hides her in his attic and Royal, one of the heads of the farming community in Indiana. This is just as much a journey of Cora's self-discovery as it is a run for freedom.

Whitehead also does a brilliant job of capturing other points of view besides Cora by giving other characters their own chapters. These chapters alternate with Cora's journey capturing Caesar and Mabel's less successful escapes than Cora's. (Caesar is killed by an angry mob and Mabel is bitten by a snake.) Whitehead also captures the points of view of white characters such as Ethel, Martin's reluctant wife who nurses Cora through illness and Ridgeway, a slave catcher who is equal parts Uncle Tom's Cabin's Simon Legree and Les Miserable's Inspector Javert. Ridgeway is obsessed with capturing Cora because he is consumed by memories of her mother, the only slave that he failed to catch. He is determined to even the score by capturing Cora and doesn't care how many men he has to sacrifice to do it. His obsession gets the better of him in his final encounter with Cora as she manages to attack him and get away on a push cart.

While The Underground Railroad is an interesting alternate history, some logistics are questionable. (Wouldn't people hear this large train system under their feet giving the whole system away? Aren't people even mildly curious where those mysterious train tracks lead? The book doesn't mention Harriet Tubman, but wouldn't that make her one of the first female train engineers and in this alternate timeline is she as successful as she was in the real timeline that "she was the only conductor who never lost a passenger?") But no matter. The Underground Railroad does what good alternate history is supposed to do. It mentions an intriguing possibility of how history could have played out and gives a brilliant story to surround that possibility.