Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde [May/06]

This is book 2 in the Thursday Next series, the adventures of a literary agent. This is another case where the back of the book really covers the story quite well:

Her adventures as a renowned Special Operative in literary detection have left Thursday Next yearning for a rest. But when the love of her life is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must bite the bullet and moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative in the secret world of Jurisfiction, the police force inside books. There she is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, the famous man-hater from Dickens's Great Expectations, who teaches her to book-jump like a pro. If she retrieves a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe's "The Raven", she thinks Goliath might return her lost love, Landen. But her latest mission is endlessly complicated. Not only are there side trips into the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth.

It really was a tale order for such a small book. I think if anything I liked this one better than the first book in the series, The Eyre Affair. The only thing that made me sad was the ending made the book not able to be read on its own, while the first one cleaned up the loose ends. I have to read the third book to see what happens next, but I want to have the fourth one on hand before I attempt so that if I want to know what happens next it is available. Might have to order it off Amazon as I am not having much luck tracking it down. Some people call these books monotonous, but I enjoy her adventures through the literary worlds. It also makes me want to read the books that she travels through.

4.5/5