The Woman Who Died a Lot: A Thursday Next Novel

Somehow Jasper Fforde manages to continue to innovate without the stories seeming contrived. He has created a fantastical world that I would love to visit. No spoilers here, you really should read Thursday's continuing story.

I love Thursday. And I love how Fforde incorporates commentary about the weirdness of our world into hers. Religion, megacorporations, budgets, city planning - all devastatingly and hilariously examined.

if you've been underwhelmed by the past Thursday Next books, this book feels like great Thursday Next!! I'm a fan so I'll read every book in the series, but this was definitely a lot more fun than previous books!

Fast delivery. Dust cover had clear sticky gum adhesive covering 50% of back cover and a portion of the spine. Inside actual book were major tears as if another dust cover had belonged to the book and was glued in and then ripped out.

Books tell stories. That's what they do. Good books tell good stories. Great books not only tell great stories, but they transport readers to someplace out of the reader's experience and immerse them in a different world.

No one in modern fiction has built a more intriguing, fully realized, and humorous world than the alternate Earth of Jasper Fforde found in his Thursday Next series. What's amazing about his accomplishment is that he has technically built more than one world in the series; his Bookworld adds yet another layer to Thursday's quirky reality. Now, in his latest release, _The Woman Who Died a Lot_, Fforde has added the world of Dark Reading Matter, which the end notes of this book state will be the focus of the next Next novel.

Yet in reading _The Woman Who Died a Lot_ a major issue with the direction of the Next series becomes clear. As good as Fforde's worldbuilding is, it is overwhelming his narrative. At some point, all the goofy "Nextian physics" and time travel and alt history and parallel realities and parallel subrealities and alt religion start to crowd out something critical to good books: a decent story.

What made the Thursday Next series so much fun was not just the odd world author Fforde thrust his heroine into, but the fact he built that world around good plots. But as the last few books have proven, wrapping a paper-thin plotline around a world doesn't work as well. And sadly, _The Woman Who Died a Lot_ doesn't have much of a story.

Most fans of the series may not miss the fact that it takes a third of the book before a plot begins to emerge. They will love all the goofiness, puns, knowing references, and so on that are the hallmark of this series. That's all well and good, but without a solid story, who cares?

Fforde also betrays himself by hammering his already fragile plot into something like flakes of gold leaf. The novel contains MANY chapters, each a break from the chapter before it, each a subunit of the book, and each subsequently feeling disconnected from the whole. In short, the book doesn't so much flow as it jerks from event to event.

Notice this review's lack of overview of the plot for this book. Problem is, a summary of a couple sentences goes far too far in betraying the entirety of the plotline. Because there isn't much of one--and what there is resembles three or four short story ideas cobbled together, none of which is capable on its own of sustaining a full-length novel. And that's a huge problem.

To make matters worse, the events that kick the plotline forward are so convoluted it makes this reader wonder if all the Nextian physics are interfering with, rather than boosting, the storyline. The wacky world of Thursday Next and her family feels like an intruder, like some annoying person tapping you on the shoulder every couple sentences while yelling, "Notice me!" It all becomes too self-aware, as if Fforde has lost control of the world he so carefully crafted in earlier books.

As a longtime reader of Fforde's books, I wonder if he needs to burn down some of the world he has built and start over. Perhaps the Dark Reading Matter world will be his stab at this. But then, it's just another world to add into the existing ones that already overwhelm the Next novels.

For this series, it seems to me that Fforde neeeds to go back to the main and the plain. We need plot over puns. Labor to make the story interesting and the world of Thursday Next will enhance the plot. But when worldbuilding takes center stage, plot suffers. And we readers don't want to suffer through Thursday angst without a decent story driving it.

This is another book in the really good (and really funny) Thursday Next series. In this book an older Thursday Next, still recovering from injuries, is forced to realize that she can no longer physically confront criminals the way she could as a younger woman. She is passed over for command of the revived literary SpecOps unit (and is no longer able to enter BookWorld). Meanwhile God has threatened to smite her town (perhaps because of her brother's success at running the Church of the Global Standard Deity) and everyone is depending on her inventor daughter Tuesday (who is still in high school) to invent a way to shield the town. Meanwhile the time travelling ChronoGuard has been disbanded and those who would have been its employees (including Thursday's son Friday) have received letters outlining their new lives. Friday is told he will go to jail for committing murder in just a few days. Lots of hijinks ensue, although this book is less literary oriented than most of the others.

I had forgotten how much fun this series is.

Thursday Next is a legend in her own time. Without question the leading enforcement officer in the Bookworld, and quite simply a superstar across several different dimensions, Thursday is a woman in flux, being forced into a new stage of life following a failed assassination attempt. Hobbled with physical injury that prohibits her abilities as a police officer for literary crimes, she must now take on a new task as the Chief Librarian at the "All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso's Drink Not Included Library," which obviously takes corporate sponsorship to ridiculous new levels. While her budget is under attack and soon to be reduced by 100%, that is the least of her problems.

Thursday has a mindworm --- a vicious memory plant dropped into her brain by the villainous Aornis Hades, which makes her believe she has a daughter she does not have. Or does her husband, Landon, actually have the mindworm? Or is it their daughter, Tuesday? One of them does. It's troublesome and problematic, and disturbs everyday life. Add to the mix that Aornis has escaped from prison and Thursday is fearful for what could befall her family if Aornis is looking to come back and finish the job. While potential murder and death at the hands of a villain is bad, that is the least of her problems.

The Goliath Corporation, the corporate behemoth that has its hands in everything and had been a target for Thursday in her life as an officer, is up to no good. This is not a surprise. Goliath's security wiz, Jack Schitt, is back --- and boy is he still cheesed about Thursday trapping him within Poe's The Raven way back when. Jack is out to take down Thursday, this time using a team of Day Players --- synthetic replicas of Thursday that are so lifelike that the only way they can be recognized is if they cannot repeat the code phrase Real Thursday has worked up as proof of who she is. But this is the least of her problems.

Thursday's son, Friday, was destined to be a great hero of the ChronoGuard until a glitch in history demanded a shutdown of the time engines. He received a printout of what his new destiny will be, and it's not one he savors. You see, by the end of the week, he will murder Gavin Watkins in cold blood and rot away in prison. So while being forced into a new career, suffering pain of body and mind, avoiding deadly rivals and replacements, Thursday tries to help Friday track down the clues as to why he kills Gavin and to hopefully alter that historical path. You'd think that would be enough, but that's the least of her problems.

God is ticked off. He's been so angry with mankind that he's begun Smiting. The upside is that God gives the people a heads up. So Thursday's real daughter, Tuesday, a wicked scientific genius who is still a teenager in high school, is racing against time to devise a Smite Shield that will protect the town of Swindon from destruction at the hands of a vengeful God. The science isn't working out right and time is running short...and God might not be the only problem in this scenario.

And so is woven the fantastic and hilarious adventure in THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT, the seventh installment in Jasper Fforde's successful Thursday Next series. As with all prior installments, Fforde has worked to keep this story fresh and exciting, and the cavalcade of literary references and tongue-in-cheek jokes makes for fun reading. Thursday is really a shell of her former self, confused and depressed by her career shift, as well as feeling protective of her record as a new hotshot named Phoebe Smalls is lining up a career to surpass her. Thursday drifts from jealous former officer to trusted accomplice, working alongside Phoebe to try and sort out all of the strands of the plot (which the book boasts it now contains 50% more of) and make some sense of things. And a lot of sense needs to be made. But to get to more order, she needs to submerge into more chaos over the one week laid out in the novel.

Perhaps one of the great ideas devised by Fforde and included here are the librarians and just what sort of powers they have. Authorized use of force? Oh, yes. Librarians may, in fact, open fire on you within the library "for the maintenance of the collections and public order." Members of the Special Library Service act as Secret Service agents, swearing to take a bullet to protect the property of the library. Fforde, in one of the witty "non-fiction" paragraphs that open each chapter, tells us that "Libraries have never been quieter, and theft and vandalism dropped by 72 percent." So while Thursday may be a librarian, she is certainly not JUST a librarian.

THE WOMAN WHO DIED A LOT is a more than worthy advancement of the Thursday Next saga, and the setup for book eight is just perfect. Those who have never read this series are missing out. Jasper Fforde is amongst a handful of spectacularly talented authors who do not receive near the level of attention that they do deserve. He deftly handles multi-plot threads and marries ingredients of mystery, science fiction, humor and literature into one exquisite gift.

Reviewed by Stephen Hubbard

Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" novels are literaly and literarily impossible to describe. He began with The Eyre Affair in 2001 and The Woman Who Died a Lot is the seventh and latest book in the series. I highly recommend the books, but with the caveat that they need to be read from the beginning and in order. This is not the type of series that you can jump into midway through and hope to understand what's going on. Start at the beginning, and let Fforde introduce the world Thursday inhabits to you gently, and get you accustomed to the time travel, book travel, home-cloned dodos, and general mayhem that exists and makes the series as smart and as entertaining as it is.

The Woman Who Died a Lot begins with Thursday Next, four months into a forced semiretirement in her home in Swindon, trying to recover from a near fatal assassination attempt. She can't walk without a stick, has limited use of one of her arms, and her vision has been compromised. The idea was for her to enjoy some R & R at home with her husband Landen, her two children Friday and Tuesday, and Jenny, her third child, who doesn't actually exist.

But life has a way of happening, and in the world Fforde has created, it happens in bizarre and inexplicable ways. Her son Friday's life is in turmoil as his future success as head of the ChronoGuard, saving seventy-six billion lives traveling back and fourth in time, has been eradicated due to the shutdown of the Time Engines. And his recently delivered Letter of Destiny from the Federated Union of Timeworkers reveals to him that his new future consists of him murdering a man at the end of the week and spending the next 37 years in prison.

Her genius daughter Tuesday is having problems working out the bugs with the Anti-Smote Shield, which is desperately needed soon to protect Swindon from an impending smiting from an angry god. If she can't get it working properly, Swindon and all its inhabitants, will be wiped off the face of the earth. Jenny, her "other daughter" is in fact a mindworm, implanted by Mnemonomorph Aornis Hades in Thursday's brain, and doesn't actually exist. Thursday had a tattoo placed on the back of her hand to remind herself that Jenny never existed, but needs to track down Aornis in order to put an end to the neverending rollercoaster of emotions that the mindworm and tattoo are causing her.

Got all that? It's really just the tip of the iceberg.

A Jasper Fforde book is always a special kind of book. His creativity has no boundaries and his obvious intelligence and vast knowledge of literature is always evident in his stories.

Seventh in the Tuesday Next fantasy series about a secret agent-type librarian willing to take on megalithic corporations intent on ruling the world through books. Greed. Money. Power. Books.

MY TAKE
I really don't recommend diving into this without having read at least a few of the earlier Thursday Nexts. (Start with The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1) ---Jane Austen lovers may riot or embrace its nonsense, but y'all won't be bored!)

The first half was bloody confusing. And it's totally fantastical, odd, crazy, and disjointed. Don't even try to make sense of it. However, it is well worth reading if only for the snark and send-ups Fforde enjoys making against society, books and reading, and our own expectations. It's not until the second half that all the ends set loose in the first half start to come together. That's not to say they all make sense in the second half, though.

I have no idea how Fforde keeps this stuff straight. Then again, it's so convoluted, he probably doesn't need to. This one is probably the most disjointed in the Thursday Next series. I have to wonder if Fforde used it to pull together a number of odd elements, tidying some up and starting new possibilities.

Librarians will sigh, desire, and pant for the power and budget that Thursday wields. They and authors will probably fantasize about entering the Dark Matter...I know I wanna visit.

Read this and you will learn the truth about Scooby Doo's ending, that Shatner's characterization of Captain Kirk is actually from a book by Ovid, where the early Daleks roost, where the lost episodes of Doctor Who are, and a whole lot more.

Getting into the Storyline
This is not a great time in Thursday's life. She didn't get the job offer she was hoping for. Phoebe Smalls is a major pain. Her brother Joffy is likely to die and there is only a small chance she can save him. The mindworm is roving throughout the family. And Gavin is a threat to Friday's freedom and Tuesday's bed.

Oh, man, there's a Stupidity tax surplus that the government department, the SEC*, has to spend! They're desperately trying to figure out really stupid things to spend money on. And it's all the fault of that CommonSense party that's in power. Heck, Thursday should bring her tax woes over here. God knows we have enough stupid ideas...

Duffy is telling Thursday about the very important budget meeting for the library and her response is:

"I'll just turn up tomorrow morning and start having meetings...Then...I'll hide for a bit...forget it all by evening...and rely on subordinates and assistants to deal with actually running the place.


"Thank goodness for that," said Duffy..."I was worried you had no experience of running a large public department."

* Stupid Events Commission. Hmmm, I wonder who Fforde is channeling...hmmm...

THE STORY
There are two major catastrophes looming for Swindon: Asteroid HR-6984 and the scheduled Smiting by God. A third disaster continues to loop for the Next-Parke-Laine household where each member of the family takes it in turn believing that sister/daughter Jenny is alive, but just missing.

Tuesday with a genius I.Q. of 240, has been tasked with creating a shield that will protect the earth, an Anti-Smite Defense Shield. Joffy is trying to set up talks with the Almighty about all these smitings.

Meanwhile, Friday is trying to cope with his layoff from the ChronoGuards and the switch to his future which is detailed in his Letter of Destiny. A number of people are in the same boat. Fortunately, Jimmy-G at TJ-Maxx (the Temporal prison) is starting up the Destiny Aware Support Group.

Thursday is still pining for her action-packed job with SO-27, in spite of her aching hip and all the pain patches she wears.

And Synthetic Thursdays are out there, replacing the real one.

THE CHARACTERS
Detective Tuesday Next is a former SpecOps agent for SO-27, the Literary Detectives. Badly injured in One of Our Thursdays is Missing (Thursday Next, #6), she's just received an offer to be the "head of the entire Swindon All-You-Can-Eat-at-Fatso's-Drink Not Included Library Service" with a ginormously humongous budget. Landen Parke-Laine is her easy-going husband. Their daughter Jenny never existed, however they still have sixteen-year-old, über genius Tuesday and her brother Friday whose brilliant future as head of ChronoGuard is in serious jeopardy. So serious, that he won't have it.

"Thursday reminisces over Tuesday as a baby, "her first Erector set at two, her first long-chain polymer at four, and of learning Latin at five, so she could better understand the Principia Mathematica" and "how much the teachers said they'd learned..."

Pickwick is the family dodo, which Thursday cloned into real life. The Wing Commander, a.k.a., Wingco (he's the fictional Wing Commander Cornelius Scampton-Tippet, a wartime RAF officer) assists Tuesday while pursuing his research into the DRM. Joffy is Tuesday's brother and the supreme head of the Church of the Global Standard Deity; Miles Hawke is his partner, a former SpecOps Tactical Support (SO-14) agent.

Thursday's dad is still alive. When the future was changed, the ChronoGuard had to change his future and he chose the past of a plumber with fifty years in. He has his reasons. Any estate with 80 acres or more was required to have an ornamental hermit. Thanks to Tuesday's inventions and lab requirements, the Next-Parke-Laines' have such an estate and Millon de Floss is their necessary hermit-to-be as well as Thursday's ex-stalker and biographer; he still has to pass his hermiting exams.

Commander Phoebe Smalls is a younger version of Tuesday, but with a lot to learn. And she's getting the job Thursday wanted. Still, there's nothing like bonding over warm bodies... Bunty Fairweather is involved with the city council and a lot of committees, one of which is Swindon's Smite Avoidance Team working closely with Goliath's Smote Solutions. Gavin Watkins is a smarmy git with a foul mouth and lousy manners whom it is extremely pleasurable to consider killing. "Stig" Stiggins is a Neanderthal buddy of Thursday's. Regional Commander Braxton Hicks has served a long time on the SpecOps departments in Wessex and others. Colonel Wexler heads up the SLS.

John Duffy will be Thursday's personal assistant at the library. Before being invalided out, he was a decorated SLS operative. James Finisterre has been a backroom boy at SO-27, now he's in charge of the antiquarian section at the Wessex Library. Conrad Spoons is the library's chief accountant. Mrs. Hilly is a member of the Blyton Fundamentalists interested in turning back to the original Enid Blyton stories which kept women in the kitchen and the nursery.

Dr. Newton Chumley is the psychiatrist whom Thursday needs to impress in a certain direction. Mr. Chowdry is part of the Asteroid Strike Likelihood Committee with an interesting take on faith and statistics reflecting the chances of the asteroid striking earth. The Manchild pretty much lives at the Kemble Time Park where the decommissioned time machines are standing. Tim is a righteous man with even deeper layers.

Acheron Hades' little sister is Aornis, a mnemonomorph as is the Cleaning Lady; Aornis has given Thursday a mindworm. Mother Daisy, the former Daisy Mutlar, leads the Blessed Ladies of the Lobster and has a major hate for Thursday--for stealing Landen from her at the altar. Sister Henrietta is actually Brother Henry.

Jacob Z. Krantz is a Goliath employee with an illegal stock of Synthetics he's setting loose on Swindon. Lupton Cornball is the Goliath representative in Swindon. Jack Schitt is quite high up on the Goliath ladder, number ninety-one, and would love to take Thursday out even though he respects her. Crabbe is not quite as evil as Schitt and both are after writings by St. Zvlkx, a saint infamous for his cheapness and obsession with drink and brothels. Flossie Buxton is an old, unloved classmate of Thursday's.

Goliath is a mega corporation working at taking over the world. THeir own Protocol 451 forbids any Goliath representative from approaching Thursday; she's cost them too much money. The ChronoGuard policed the timeline, but when a future traveler discovered that they hadn't invented time travel, well, they had to shut down the timeline. SpecOps, formally known as Special Operations Network, helps the police deal with situations outside normal duties. ICFs, or Imaginary Childhood Friends, wander the earth as living stories. Dark Reading Matter (DRM; hmmm, more channeling?) is a theory by the "storyologists who believe it could be a strong resource for remnants of long-lost books, forgotten oral tradition, and ideas locked in writers' heads when they died". The Special Library Service (SLS) are charged with protecting the nation's literary heritage and they'll take a bullet to protect their charges whether they're in libraries or in transit. (They have their own TV series and recruitment is NOT a problem!)

THE COVER
The cover is curious. I have to wonder which Tuesday it is dangling from the twisted rope just under the book she fell through. I'm not too keen on the red-gradated fan shapes that make up the background, but I do love Fforde's taking advantage of the closed book pages to inform us that this is A Thursday Next Novel. And considering the number of bodies that crop up along with the "depth" of the crimes, the figure cutout that goes through the book and all its pages is very appropriate.

The title is too true as Thursday is The Woman Who Died a Lot.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a world-weary hero preparing for the climactic battle must say something like, "I'm too old for this."

Except in the case of Thursday Next, because the heroine of Jasper Fforde's mind-bending alternative-world series has encountered so much weirdness that it's doubtful that a boundary exists that she hasn't already smashed through.

Battling the undead? Check. Befriending reconstructed Neanderthals? Been there. Meeting Miss Haversham? She trained under her. The end of her life? Bought the nightgown. The end of the universe? Not only reached it, but circled around to the beginning. Banal English television? Got the DVD.

If you haven't paged through her first six books, then you should drop this review and get them. If you like Douglas Adams, "Alice in Wonderland"- like logic, classic literature, books in general, and the kind of literate mind-bending weirdness that English writers carry off with such aplomb, it's a guaranteed pleasure that you'll love Thursday Next.

But if you're still with me, then I have an opinion you might not want to hear: "The Woman Who Died a Lot" is . . . all right.

"The Woman Who Died a Lot" opens in media res with enormous changes afoot. The SpecOps Network that Next worked for as a Literary Detective had been abolished and is undergoing reformation. It's been discovered that time travel doesn't exist, so the ChronoGuard that monitored the timestream had been disbanded. Seriously injured at the end of the last book, Next hobbles about on a cane and needs pain patches to get through her day, and she's still beset with a mindworm that makes her believe she has a daughter, Jenny.

See, "The Woman Who Died A Lot" is a lot like the clones that pop up in the book. They look the same as the real thing, they function just as well, even better in some ways. But they don't last long, because they don't have a digestive system, hence their brand name, Day Players.

Same thing with the book. Part of the problem is that Fforde set up a couple of major events in the opening chapters ─ the destruction of downtown Swindon by God on Friday and the mindworm plot ─ then has to wait until the end of the book to set them off. In between, there's not a whole hell of a lot that Thursday can do about them, so she has to deal with other issues. She tries to get a shrink to classify her at the right level of insanity to win a job leading the Literary Detectives; deal with her nemesis, Goliath Industries, which controls society; and figure out the cause of a plague of Thursday clones seemingly intent on replacing her.

All in all, a pleasurable read, with occasional laugh-out-loud moments; librarians will especially love their role in Fforde's world. Despite my complaints, I breezed through this book even when I had more important things to do. So maybe it's me. Maybe I'm irritated because Fforde has two other series whose books I've eagerly awaiting for years ─ the comic Nursery Crimes with its mix of noir and children's lit, and the brilliant Shades of Grey trilogy with its light-based mysteries just begging to be unwrapped ─ and I'm put off by another Thursday Next (or a book in his fourth series, "The Last Dragonslayer," which left me cold). Maybe I'm too old for this.

But there you have it. Not Fforde's best book, but ─ well, I won't say worst, because that implies that there is a worst Thursday Next book, and that's not true. Like Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, a decent Next is still better than a lot of author's best efforts.

Again we have ANOTHER Fforde book that is NOT the sequel to Shades of Grey. What? I'm not impatient or anything. And who can really be unhappy to have another installment with the delighful Thursday Next?

Previous book One of Our Thursdays Is Missing was quite possibly my favorite in the series (maybe second favorite after first book The Eyre Affair). That book was largely set in BookWorld and was full of zany adventures and a robot butler, who is possibly destroyed as he is not in this book (I hope he is still functioning but can't remember). This book is focusing on an older Thursday recovering from injuries sustained last book as well as her husband Landen and actually including her kids Tuesday, Friday, and Jenny in addition to the evil machinations of Goliath Corporation. Tuesday is trying to prevent a Smiting and Friday is dealing with the knowledge that he would have had a brilliant career in the ChronoGuard except that it was disbanded. Jenny does not actually exist; she is a mindworm put into their heads by Aornis Hades.

I had some trouble staying engaged with this book as I feel like it is slightly less literary than some of the other episodes. Thursday cannot read herself into books any more due to her injuries and Goliath's plots against her are as obscure as ever. However while I have previously enjoyed all the zaniness, this time it felt like too much. It all ties together-I can clearly see that Fforde knows what he's doing but it just didn't work for me this time.

Overall: Definitely a read for Thursday Next diehards (and you *must* read the previous books in order too) but it was a letdown for me.

From thepickygirl.com:

*I received this book from the publisher Viking in exchange for an honest review.

Thursday Next lives in a world...slightly different than ours. Librarians are highly respected and well paid. The punishment for overdue library books is a bit stiffer than a quarter-per-day fine, and then there's Bookworld, where the characters and places in books actually exist. After being injured in the line of duty as a literary detective, Thursday Next is recuperating. But that doesn't mean the world is perfect. A mindworm has left her with memories of a daughter she doesn't have and a tattoo on her wrist as a reminder. The Global Standard Deity is planning a smiting, and Thursday's genius daughter, Tuesday, hasn't quite figured out an anti-smiting technology. Thursday's son, Friday, has problems of his own. The time engines have shut down, and the career he would have had has been replaced. Now he's slated to murder someone in less than a week, and he feels powerless to stop it. Thursday has been instated as Chief Librarian, but she comes up against her enemy, Goliath and faces a 100% budget cut.

If that sounds like a lot, it is. In fact, it had been long enough since I read a Fforde, that, in the beginning, I felt like I was reading a very fun but very different language. Partly, though, that's because Thursday and her family are confused. One day she wakes up with cuts and bruises and doesn't know how she got them. Then, the mindworm with the memory of Jenny, the fake daughter, switches to Thursday's husband. Her children wake up with signs of fights but can't recall how they got them, either. What's going on?

The Woman Who Died A Lot is so enjoyable. In many ways, Fforde's writing feels much older than it is and in fact reminded me of a book I read when I was young, Rivets and Sprockets (though I don't remember much about it). The sci-fi feel along with the humor and a touch of mystery is perfect, and I can't wait to go back and re-read The Eyre Affair and pick up the other books in the series.

Everything you've come to expect from the Thursday Next series - literally. All the hairbrained schemes and comical asides from all of the previous books are still in play, and this episode even brings some new ones into play.
The Chronogaurd has been disbanded - or never existed - Swindon's scheduled for a righteous smiting and Goliath is still out there plotting something.
An enjoyable read for those who have read all the prior books in the series, but most likely hopelessly confusing for those that haven't. It also feels like a stopgap: a laying of the groundwork for the next book in the series. Here's looking forward to Dark Reading Matter!

I love Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next, otherwise why would I have read this book? That said, the last two books in the series have left me less than satisfied. In One of our Thursdays is Missing, the plot takes place almost entirely in BookWorld with the protagonist being the written Thursday. In TWWDAL, we have a book that takes place entirely in the "real" world. In the former, I missed the real Thursday, and in the latter, I missed the whimsy of BookWorld. Something in the recipe of each is missing. What I really love about these books is the delight in entering this made up world, and the sense that Thursday is also having fun, at least some of the time. In this outing Thursday is most definitely not having fun - not at work and not with Landon at home either. At one point Landon encourages her to slow down and reminds her that she is bruised, battered and not getting any younger. I found myself wanting to say to Thursday, "Listen to your husband- you really need a rest." This is not good.

Apart from the overall somber nature of the story, the plot was also lacking. Yes, these novels have always been about more than just the narrative, but in TWWDAL it barely holds together. I love the crazy world that Fforde has created. I think someone once described it as "so real you almost feel like you could buy real estate there" and I wholeheartedly agree. However, this world without a good story feels empty. The setup for the next novel is there, and it sounds promising. This time, I hope we get a story worthy of its wacky, whimsical, and truly inventive setting.

This is the best Thursday Next novel since The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel. Limiting the action to the real world eliminates some of the anything-can-happen plot twists that can occur in the book world. This keeps the narrative more (well, "grounded" isn't really a word I often use when discussing Jasper Fforde's work--"plausible" being another best avoided)--keeps the narrative more well tied to the developing plot.

Fforde's wild imagination still takes us on a delightful roller coaster ride. For the first two-thirds of the book I had no idea what was going on, and as I started to piece together what the solutions to the problems would be, he still managed to completely surprise me. I won't offer spoilers, but I will say that the resolutions of a couple of character's stories were completely unexpected.

A knowledge of the events in the previous Thursday Next books would help, especially the events in First Among Sequels (Thursday Next, Book 5) will help with understanding the novel, but is perhaps not completely required. The book tells a good self-contained story, once you understand who Thursday Next and her family, especially Jenny, are.

Book lovers and devotees of "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"will be thrilled to discover this series, of which this is the 7th. (Where have I been?) Thursday Next is the series' heroine, a librarian-detective in a world of multiple time dimensions and altered realities. Although nobody goes time-traveling in this installment, time travel is the essence of this ingenious plot to stop a madman and his evil corporation from destroying the world by sending humanoid robots into the world of Dark Matter. This is a world where Old Testament God announces where and when his next smiting will occur, and his appearance at the appointed time becomes a celebrity event. Can't wait to start reading the series from the beginning.

I picked up the book because the title looked intriguing. I have not read any other Thursday Next novels and I spent a great deal of time trying to fill in the blanks about what has happened prior. The book is witty and fun but I was confused! I am going to go back and read the series from the beginning and then read this one again and I am sure that I will enjoy it more than I did. So, if you have picked up this book without having read the prior ones, put it down and start with book number one, trust me on this.

This Thursday Next adventure is a little less bookie, but still high library fantasy. Memory issues and mind worms plague our heroine as she deal with aging and injuries.
To enter Fforde's and Thursday's world, read "The Eyre Affair" first. But who could not love a story that contains a quotes like this: "She handed me a blue ballistic vest with LIBRARIAN written on the back in white letters." and "Librarying is a harder profession than the public realizes...People think it's all rubber stamps, knowing Dewey 521 is celestial mechanics and try saying `Try looking under fiction' sixty-eight times a day."

Loads of sarcasm, witty humor and good fun in this seventh book of Thursday Next. Old problems with Goliath, and recurring characters reside within, and we meet several Righteous Men, learn the thoughts of Pickwick, and have an overall good time.

Four and a half stars!

The latest Thursday Next novel features an aging Thursday working against time to stop the wrath of God from destroying her town & killing her brother. Great fun with lots of strange ideas to contemplate.

This book reminded me why I love Jasper Fforde so very much. Wacky premise, intricate plotting that barely makes sense, and people you like so much it hurts plunked down in the midst of it all, doing their best to make sense of the madness. And, in the process, saving the world. Not as cerebral, exactly, as some of his other books. More on the butt-kicking side. Extremely fun. And Stig is back!

I was hoping this book would delight, confuse, and amuse me, and it did. I had interludes of chuckling, laughing, and even giggling, broken only by pausing to review characters and situations to avoid excessive confusion, and bouts of resisting the temptation to read chunks of text to my husband who was impatiently waiting his turn.

I really enjoy Jasper Fforde and his ever-deeper inspection of Tuesday Next's parallel universe. I imported my copy from Germany because I wanted to get it before the US press date. Enjoyed The Woman Who Died a Lot, but it was not quite on par with the first few books. I missed the wacky footnotes and the corrupt text that you're supposed to view as a message from Book World, etc. This was more of a stock novel, taking place only in the real world (which, let's face it, is a bit meh). There was a cliffhanger ending, so I am hoping we get back to wackier happenings in the next Thursday Next.

Jasper Fforde is my favorite author at this time. This book and all of the related series are a mixture of sci-fi, fantasy, parallel worlds, time travel, history, fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The man is a genius, no doubt about it.

Thursday Next, my favourite cloned literary heroine. Filled with sly puns, clever references and outrageous connections to books you know and love. Take a minute to research Samuel Pepys and a whole new avenue (freeway, actually!) of subtle humour will open up to you.

Most of those reading these reviews will already be familiar with Jasper Fforde and the Thursday Next series. If you are not one of them, Stop, Do Not Pass GO, and start with the first Thursday Next novel, "The Eyre Affair". You might not give it 5 stars, but know that the series gets better with each novel, at least for the first four, where it hits a high point for me with "Something Rotten".

So, if you know Fforde and the Next series, why are you here? Certainly, not to get the plot spoiled. I won't spoil it. Perhaps, it's because, like me, you found the previous novel "One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing" to be a bit of a let down. I also didn't enjoy "Shades of Grey" much (because I couldn't develop sympathy for any of the characters). But, I enjoyed the other Next novels so much that I spent almost as much on postage as the book itself to have it shipped from the UK.

So, the question is, "Has Fford lost it?" I'm delighted to report that, if he did, he's found it again!

Maybe if OOOTIM wasn't such a letdown I'd likely have given TWWDAL four stars ("Something Rotten" is still my favorite), but having Fforde back in fine form is by itself worth the five stars.

It is tempting to talk about a subplot or some other detail, but you're already a fan. All you want to know is whether the book might be a disappointment. It isn't!

Here's something of no consequence other than to show that TWWDAL is classic Fforde. Describing a temporal gradient...

"...I [Thursday] walked back up the gradient. I turned back to Friday and asked if he was okay.

"He said he was but I could see that his mouth wasn't moving when he spoke. I was talking to him as he was now, but [i]seeing[/i] him as he would be in about thirty seconds. Conversely, he was hearing what I said now, but seeing me as I had been half a minute ago."

Uhm...right!

This book is great. It keeps you guessing and off balance the whole way. That might not work for some but I loved it. It's so unique and strange in a great way. I hope this series goes on for a while.

I just listened to this on audiobook, and was once again enchanted by Thursday and her world. Like the previous volumes in this series, the work hums with ideas, sharp writing, and high and low humor. Looking forward to the next Next.

Enjoyable, a good sequel. Not as convoluted and confusing as some of the bookworld novels. Once again multiple story lines resolve themselves at the end, with a set up for the next in series. Really waiting for a sequel to Shades of Grey.

Jasper Fforde is a genius with words and social humor. I especially enjoy the Thursday Next genre. The absurdity of the situations is paralleled by their plausibility given the condition of the world today, that makes his satire a laugh out loud experience. It helps to have read his previous books, as characters and their complex motivations re-appear in this sequel, and it really helps to know the territory. He writes a very high speed plot with lots of curves and digressions, so it takes a bit of time to digest. But one you get into his world, it is hard to leave. He makes you think while you are having fun in Swindon contemplating who would benefit from the end of the world.