New Book Alert: The Screaming Skull (The Chronicles of Elberon Vol. 1) by Rick Ferguson; Brilliantly Funny Parody of the Epic Fantasy Genre

New Book Alert: The Screaming Skull (The Chronicles of Elberon Vol. 1) by Rick Ferguson; Brilliantly Funny Parody of the Epic Fantasy Genre

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

If you read a lot of epic fantasies, you could do worse than reading Rick Ferguson's The Chronicles of Elberon. Of course if you were looking to read a serious epic fantasy, you could do a lot better. But if you are in the mood for a parody of the genre which mines the various standard characters and tropes for all their humorous worth, then this is definitely the right choice.

King Elberon, Lord of the Tradewind Isles, Defender of the Faith, President of the Southern Shield, High Admiral of the Seven Fleets, Protector of the Iron Coast, and Friend of the Dolphins is in despair. It is his birthday and he learns from a soothsayer that he will die at age 130 years old sitting on the toilet. Not exactly the heroic going out in a blaze- of-glory-warrior-death that any sword- wielding-Odin-worshipping King and Fighter dreams about but the next news is even worse. Lithaine, an elf and Elberon’s former friend and companion has an army and is heading straight for Elberon to kill him. With regret and remembering that he invited all of his other former companions to the party with the intent to kill them, Elberon decides to document his life.

From the moment that he stole a magical girdle which gave super strength and challenged his warlord father for his independence, Elberon's life has been one adventure after another. Along the way, he meets various allies all of which come from your standard fantasy series and are his True Companions. There is the aforementioned Lithaine, who looks like your typical handsome graceful romantic elf, but has a foul mouth and a sardonic sense of humor. Redulfo, a wizard who absorbed a dark spirit and therefore his status changed from Balanced Good to Disciplined Evil. Amabored, a warrior attached to his sword, Stormcrow and whom Elberon describes as “the most bloodthirsty son of a bitch (he) has ever met.” Malcolm, a paladin Lindar, a half elf, Androgen, a dwarf, and James, a ranger round out the team making the typical crew of humans, elves, wizards, and dwarves that can be found in these works.

Of course Our Heroes have to take on magical quests and face villains that are found in these works everything from dark wizards, to corrupt kings and warlords, to more dragons and monsters than you can wave Wun Wun, the Game of Thrones giant at.

Naturally, the adventurers also find love and with many of his journies, Elberon recalls the many mistresses and lovers that he had along the way. Two are the most important. Melinda, a thief who later becomes head of the Thieve's Guild assists Elberon a number of times before the two become lovers. Another woman in Elberon's adventurous past is Cassiopeia, a nubile warrior cleric priestess who becomes one of Elberon's True Companions as well as his lover. Among Elberon's many many regrets is stringing the two women along at the same time and jeopardizing their lives as well as his love for them and vice versa.

This book is a treat for any Fantasy lovers. It is littered with references that even the newest of fans of the genre will get. Elberon and co. Are constantly worried about gaining or losing Strength, Magic, Healing, or Luck points like players of a certain well known RPG game from the ‘80’s. To further add to the joke, there is a character called Gygax named in honor of Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax. Minor and supporting characters are rich with names like Sir Michael of Moorcock and Sir Jethro of Tull.

One of the more hilarious moments comes when during a dream, Elberon encounters a wise character called Joseph Ki-Rin who informs Elberon that he is taking The Hero's Journey as defined by Joseph Campbell's book, Hero with a Thousand Faces. He calls the various steps that Elberon like meeting the wise mentor-Joseph Ki-Rin-, descend into the underworld, confront his anima, and encountering his feminine side. When Elberon is confused, Joseph Ki-Rin tells him that he is following the step of Refusing the Call.

Ferguson clearly knows his fantasy works by allowing his characters to follow the various fantasy tropes while commenting on them. Elberon asks the Reader point blank if his adventures sound too much like Tolkien. Well he points out Tolkien was the translator of the Red Book of West March and not the author so how could you rip off history and Tolkien mostly cribbed his work from Celtic and Norse mythology anyway.

As for how Elberon, a fantasy character in a Medieval-esque land knows so much about Tolkien and how he can throw phrases like “pre-industrial” around and make references to Star Wars. Well, there is a reason for that and it is one of the cleverest running gags in the book. His world, Woerth is actually one of several alternate universes. He and the other people of Woerth are familiar with the various Earths and have borrowed facets of their history and culture including worshipping various deities. Characters have even been found in the various Earths. One of their dark wizards actually can be found by different familiar names in the other Earths-Voldemort, Saruman, Vladimir Putin-you know all the evil dark wizards.

Despite the humor, there is a sense of melancholy throughout the book that keeps The Chronicles of Elberon from being a series that is just joke after joke. Elberon is a character who knows his better days are behind him. He is like the former-hero-turned-outcast who looks on his glory days once hard as the best days of his life. He also looks back with deep sadness with the mistakes he made particularly with Melinda and Cassiopeia and in despair over the things that he learned and wished that he hadn't like many of his quests were orchestrated by a deeper conspiracy.

Even though he is king with untold wealth and power, and is married and has heirs, Elberon cannot connect with his present life because he is living in the past.

The first book in the Chronicles of Elberon is a brilliant book when it deconstructs the various fantasy elements, but sometimes it runs away with itself. There is no straight linear passage of time. Instead Elberon jumps from one adventure and goes to another one and then back to the present, then to a third adventure before going back to the first one. Several plots mix together so it's hard to tell when any of them take place. Elberon for example may casually mention a character died. Then after several quests involving the character only remember several chapters later to tell us how they died. The Reader has to really pay attention to the timeline (which thankfully Ferguson supplies us with one at the end of the book.)

In a way, the choice in narration makes sense. The book is written as though Elberon is chronicling his adventures to a scribe. So he is telling his story the way most people would when they talk about something that happened in their lives, then back track to an earlier event remembering some important detail that they left out. It could also be mocking the whole en media res storytelling device found in epic tales in which adventures often began in the middle of the action rather than at the chronological beginning. Either way it doesn't make it easy to read and if I were Elberon's scribe, I would throw down my quill in despair wondering how many pages that I have to blot out and redo.

The Chronicles of Elberon is a fun series that makes fun of Fantasy but it is clearly that it is also an homage abs tribute. Rick Ferguson wrote a love letter to the genre, a very silly, satiric and at times confusing love letter, but a love letter nonetheless.

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 Thursday Next Edition: The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next Series Vol.III) by Jasper Fforde; Thursday Takes A Literary Journey Further Into The Fascinating Book World

Weekly Reader Thursday Next Edition: The Well of Lost Plots (The Thursday Next Series Vol. III) by Jasper Fforde; Thursday Takes A Literary Journey Further Into the Fascinating Book World




By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: When last we left Thursday Next in Lost in a Good Book, her husband Landen had been eradicated, while she is pregnant with his child, had been screwed over by the Goliath Corporation, and had several enemies on her tail including Aornis Hades, the bitchy magical sister of Acheron Hades, her arch enemy. What's a girl to do? Why enter the Great Library of Book World and go into hiding inside the pages of an unpublished murder mystery novel of course!


The Well of Lost Plot's main storyline is somewhat convoluted. It continues plot threads from Lost in a Good Book such as Thursday's psychic encounters with Aornis and the machinations of Yorrik Kaine, an escapee from Book World who now plays the role of corrupt politician in England. There are also murder attempts on various Jurisfiction agents including Thursday and her handler, Miss Havisham. Some sinister characters such as the Minotaur from Greek mythology and Big Martin from the horror story “Better Wait Until Big Martin Comes,” are lurking about causing trouble. Thursday has to face her second trial for Fiction Infraction inside the pages of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and where the heck is Godot and why are we waiting for him?

The biggest draw in this book is not the plot but the journey into Book World itself as Thursday learns what it's like to be a literary character. (Well a literary character in her world or more of a literary character than she already is. Never mind, just go with it!) Thursday is inside a hoary clichéd murder mystery called Caversham Heights replacing the character of Mary Jones, sidekick to Jack Spratt, detective extraordinaire. In the Book World, literary characters can take sanctioned breaks either inside other books or out in the real world, called the Outland, as long as someone else replaces them. When they get a replacement, the plot can continue as normal and the Reader is none the wiser that any change has been made. (If they leave their book without permission, that results in Page Running and is therefore illegal.)

Getting published is the most important goal for any literary character. Caversham Heights is waiting inside the Well of Lost Plots, a depository for unpublished books waiting to fly into Reader's hands. Besides the books themselves, the Well is filled with construction workers who build plots, characters, and settings and shop that sell words and plot devices. (Thursday receives A Shot in the Dark plot device which comes in handy later.) There is also the dreaded Text Sea which is just letters made from destroyed master copies of unpublished works which the gang from Caversham Heights are in fear of getting thrown in.

Besides the unique world, Fforde gives us the limitations of the lives of literary characters and how they get bored doing the same things over and over. They are mystified by Thursday’s arrival and keep asking questions about the Outland like why Outlanders drive on parkways and park on driveways. Thursday struggles through life as a literary character by doing without certain things that aren't important to the text, such as having breakfast and being surrounded by the bizarre denizens like faceless extras with no back story inside the books.

There are characters that go through great lengths to change their storylines such as in a creepy chapter in which the extras of Shadow the Sheepdog are willing to stage Thursday's murder to get an emotional high.


As always Fforde handles his and other author's characters well. In this volume, he takes great fun in making characters act differently than they do in their original works. Lucy Deane, the goody-two-shoes from Mill on the Floss becomes a gun-wielding psychopath to destroy her rival, Floss’ heroine, Maggie Tulliver. Miss Havisham and Thursday host a support group for Wuthering Heights characters who have grudges against Heathcliff (which is everyone except Catherine Earnshaw), while Heathcliff behaves like an aging womanizing rock star. Uriah Heep, David Copperfield's villain is originally Uriah Hope, a genial, sweet guy until a misspelling goes awry and turns him into the sniveling sycophant Dickens's readers know and despise.


Of course Fforde's original characters are on hand as well. Thursday shows the same feistiness and determination as she always does, particularly in her mental battles with Aornis Hades as she struggles to hold onto her memories of the eradicated Landen and fight her enemy.


The characters from Caversham Heights are an intriguing bunch as they go through the motions of a plot they know isn't working. When Thursday makes suggestions to shake things up such as Jack patch things up with his wife (instead of doing the whole 'tortured single detective’ thing), they are confused but they are willing to do so to save their home.

The most interesting original characters are a pair of Generics (background characters that have no real purpose or story), named ibb and obb. It's entertaining as Thursday teaches them about humanity using traits like sarcasm or subtext. The Generics ultimately evolve into fleshed out characters, the curvaceous beauty, Lola and the pretentious brainy, Randolph.

Interesting details pile up about the Book World. Characters talk on footnoterphones which are one-on-one conversations found in, where else, the footnotes. They can travel from book to book either by reading the pages or slipping in through the bar codes. Terms like TravelBook (information guide for Jurisfiction agents) and Echolocator (an artisan who destroys echoed words) are thrown around but thankfully are given epitaphs before each chapter to explain them.

A new interactive device called Ultra Word is created which will make reading more interesting by inserting music, scents, and visuals along with the words.

There is even an awards ceremony called the Bookies in which various literary characters receive awards like “Most Troubled Male Lead” and “Dopiest Lead Shakespeare Character.” In true action-adventure format, it is at the Bookies, in front of the entire Book World, where Thursday and her friends confront their enemies and solve the mystery with every literary character watching.
The Well of Lost Plots is a brilliant piece of metafictional writing. It makes every book lover long to schedule a holiday inside its pages.

Weekly Reader Thursday Next Edition: Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next Series Vol. II) by Jasper Fforde; Thursday Goes Behind the Scenes of Books in One of The Best Volumes in the Series

Weekly Reader Thursday Next Edition: Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next Series Vol.II) by Jasper Fforde; Thursday Goes Behind the Scenes of Books in One of The Best Volumes in the Series


By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: I always said that the Thursday Next series is the Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Wreck-it-Ralph of the literary world. Roger and Ralph take viewers through the world of animation and video games respectively featuring characters from other sources meeting, rubbing elbows, arguing, and showing how they act when they aren't working. The Thursday Next series does the same thing with the world of books.

While The Eyre Affair gave us a small taste of literary character's lives outside of their books by having its protagonist Thursday go into Jane Eyre to save Jane from a dastardly villain, Lost in a Good Book takes us one step beyond. We visit several books and a place called The Great Library where characters visit and congregate during after hours. (i.e. when they aren't being read).

Thursday received much fame for killing villain, Acheron Hades, ending the Crimean War, and not only rescuing Jane Eyre but changing the ending of the Charlotte Bronte novel. (In the Nextian world, the book ended with Jane traveling to India with her cousin St. John Rivers. Thursday changed it to the ending we know that she returns to Thornfield to marry Rochester.) Thursday barely has time to get bored with pointless censored interviews and PR gimmicks when she's on yet another case or cases.

There are plenty of different plots that run through this volume. Thursday and her colleagues receive word of a newly discovered Shakespeare play, Cardenio which just might be the real thing. She hears voices from a man called Akrid Snell, who claims that he is an attorney and she is charged with Fiction Infraction for changing Jane Eyre's ending.

Thursday is also being stalked by coincidences such as a Skyrail ticket arriving at the exact same moment she needs one and a crossword puzzle that conveniently spells out “Meddlesome,” “Thursday” and “Goodbye” before an assassin appears with a gun. Worst of all, her husband Landen Park-Laine has been eradicated (removed from time) and she is pregnant with his child.

Thursday learns that Landen was eradicated by the Goliath Corporation and Spec Ops’ Chrono Guard who need her cooperation to release a Goliath operative from the pages of Edgar Allan Poe's “The Raven” where she left him in the last book. She reluctantly agrees but does not have access to the Prose Portal which her uncle built and allowed her to travel into books. Using some coaching from her grandmother and a Japanese woman who also have the ability to travel into books, Thursday is able to travel into the Book World without the Prose Portal.

The Book World of Jasper Fforde's series is very well thought out from creatures called gramnasites who fix grammatical errors to the Bowderlizers, a group bent on removing content that they consider objectionable. There is even a law enforcement organization called Jurisfiction, whose job it is to protect books from within by making sure characters don't hop into other books and plot holes are nicely filled.

Akrid Snell, Thursday's attorney, is a member of Jurisfiction and he represents Thursday at her Fiction Infraction trial. After a very confusing trial in-what else?-Franz Kafka's “The Trial”- Thursday is introduced to the Jurisfiction staff. This is when Fforde's imagination really takes flight.

Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Wreck-it-Ralph, part of the fun of the Thursday Next series is watching different fictional characters interact with each other. Whereas The Eyre Affair was mostly limited to just Jane Eyre's characters, this one has more fun with the literary cameos. Thursday is trained by Miss Havisham of Great Expectations fame. While she is as much a man hater as she is in Dickens's original work, she is also prone to driving fast and reading trashy romance novels which she fights the Red Queen of Alice Through the Looking Glass to own. The Jurisfiction agents meet in Norland Park, home to the Dashwood family of Sense and Sensibility. Other Jurisfiction operatives include Falstaff from Shakespeare's Henry IV and Merry Wives of Windsor, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle one of Beatrix Potter's charming characters, and the Cheshire-oh sorry Unitary Authority of WarringtonCat (rezoning laws forced him to change his name). The Cat is also the Director of the Great Library, where all of the books that are or will be written are kept.


Sometimes Fforde has to resort to his own made up characters to stand in for real ones such as the aforementioned Snell and his partner, Perkins who represent every crime solving detective duo ever, Commander Bradshaw, an adventurer in the style of H. Rider Haggard's Alan Quartermaine, and Vernham Deane, the caddish but actually likeable villain of books by trashy romance novelist, Daphne Fahrquitt. Whether they are characters from other author's or Fforde's own writing, the effect is still the same. The Book World is a magnificent place that most literature lovers would dream of visiting. This and Roger Rabbit's Toontown are the ultimate destinations for an imagination influenced road trip.

Besides opening up the Book World, Fforde also opens up his characters particularly Thursday. Thursday goes through a tremendous amount of stress throughout this book and the chapters where she is coming to grip with her husband's disappearance are truly heartfelt. She is particularly stricken with the fact that no one else remembers Landen but her. This is particularly strong when she is given the choice of going to a world where she never met Landen, she chooses to remain in her world because she wants to remember her life as it was, the good and the bad.

Lost in a Good Book is a much darker story than its predecessor. Thursday uses her newfound skills to get the operative out of “The Raven” but is screwed over yet again and hunted down by various enemies. Thursday realizes that she is up against villainy that she cannot yet beat.

Instead of a happy ending, it ends with despair and defeat as Thursday goes into temporary hiding to get away from her various enemies. However she is not surrendering so much as temporarily retreating so she can fight again.

The second volume in the Thursday Next series builds on the concepts of The Eyre Affair and made them better. It makes the Reader want to do what the title suggests: get Lost in a Good Book.