The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde (The Last Dragonslayer, Book 1)

Completion Date: November 28, 2011

Reason for Reading: Fun!

In the good old days, magic was powerful, unregulated by government, and even the largest spell could be woven without filling in the magic release form B1-7g. But somewhere, somehow, the magic started draining away.

Jennifer Strange runs Kazam!, an employment agency for state-registered magicians, soothsayers and sorceresses. But work is drying up. Drain cleaner is cheaper and quicker than a spell. Why trust a cold and drafty magic carpet when jetliners offer a comfy seat and an in-flight movie? And now potions are eligible for VAT...

But then the visions start. The Last Dragon is going to be killed by a Dragonslayer at 12.00 on Sunday. The death will unleash untold devastation on the UnUnited Kingdom, setting principality against dukedom and property developer against homesteader. And all the signs are pointing to Jennifer Strange, and saying"Big Magic is coming!"

The Last Dragonslayer is fizzing with all the creativity and genius Jasper Fforde's fans delight in, and will appeal as much to the young at heart as to the younger readers for whom it is written.

I found this book entirely by accident. I probably shouldn't have started it because I am still making my way through Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, but it sounded entertaining and it was one of the few books I managed to finish in November. That has to be saying something! Jasper Fforde has a very entertaining writing style. You could still hear the voice of the Thursday Next books, but with a younger writing style and different inspiration. The Thursday Next series is very literary in nature, but this series is about magic and dragons. The main character is Jennifer Strange, an orphan who has been given the task of running Kazam!. Kazam! is an employment agency for the magical people still present in the world. This means that Jennifer has lots of strange interactions with some very interesting people.

November was a VERY slow reading month, so this book actually took me a while to get through. It was a bit depressing because I was enjoying it and it was actually pretty short, but I just never seemed to have the inspiration to sit down and read. I was very happy when I finally finished it. Fforde is just so entertaining. There are a lot of humourous moments in the book that will make you laugh aloud at times. One thing I have to say right now is that I am so impressed with Jasper Fforde and his commitment to writing strong female characters. This is the second of his series I have tried and just like Thursday in the other series we see a strong female character. I really appreciate a male author doing that. There are not enough strong female characters in literature.

I am very happy that I broke away from all reading plans and gave this book a try. I love books about dragons and do not read nearly enough. I think Fforde had an original idea with this dragon story and I look forward to seeing how it progresses with the rest of the series. I think, though, that the book ended fine and doesn't even really need a sequel. The few loose ends are nothing major, but everything is a series nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I do want to read the sequel; but I am not sure how long that will actually take me.

If you are looking for young adult fiction with dragons, magic, humour, and a strong female lead than this is the book for you. There were no love triangles either. It was refreshing! Recommended!

The Last Dragonslayer:

The Last Dragonslayer

The Song of the Quarkbeast

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

The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde (January/06)

This is a mystery series by Jasper Fforde, and I am not a person that reads many mysteries because they do not generally appeal to me. This series does, though. I had first heard of it on a message board that I visit and then promptly pushed to the back of my mind. I actually saw this novel twice at a second hand store before my mind registered where I had heard the title before and picked it up. It was amazing to me, also, because it is the first book in the series and me and second hand store history states that I am meant to find the third or fifth book, never the first. But, this time I was in luck and decided to give the mystery a try.

It is not your general run-of-the-mill mystery story because it is a literary mystery. The main character, Thursday Next, works for a section of the justice department that is concerned with literature. Most of the time they just check novels to see if they are forgaries, but once in a while something big comes across their table. This happens to Thursday when a professor of hers turns out to be involved in a big literary case and she is pulled into the middle of it.

Her uncle has made a machine that will allow people to go inside of books and interact with the characters, and the "bad guy" gets ahold of it. He has been stealing ancient manuscripts, another thing that it is the literary teams job to protect, and one of those manuscripts is the famous Jane Eyre. Imagine the excitement when he actually goes into the novel and takes out the main character. Literary freaks go crazy because the story is told entirely from Jane's point of view, so without her there is no story.

This adventure sends Thursday on a lot of missions. Firstly, she finds herself moving back to her hometown, a town that she had turned her back on because of all the bad memories it held for her. There she finds herself working for a man that is more concerned with his budget than solving a case and the true leaders of the world, a section of the "government" that controls them all. A lot of things happen in this novel, both with a character from Jane Eyre being able to come easily to her rescue from outside the pages of a book, a time travelling dad, and a period of time spent in the pages of one of the most famous novels of all time. It is extremely wonderful reading, even if you are not the type that likes mysteries, this book has things in it for everyone.

4.5/5