Product Description

Fourteen years after Thursday Next pegged out at Superhoop ‘88, her Jurisfiction job has been downgraded due to a potential conflict of interest, since her previous adventures are now themselves in print. Thursday’s time is spent worrying about her teenage son Friday and tutoring new recruits. This being fiction, however, jeopardy is never far away. Sherlock Holmes is killed at the Rheinbach falls and his series is stopped in its tracks. Before this can be righted, Miss Marple dies in a narratively inexplicable car accident, bringing her series also to a close. Thursday, receiving a death-threat clearly intended for her written self, realises what is going on – there is a serial killer is loose in the Bookworld. Meanwhile, Goliath have perfected a 22-seater Prose Portal Luxury Coach, and plan on taking literary tourists on a holiday to the works of Jane Austen. Thursday alone realises the true intent of Goliath's unwanted incursions into fiction, but she can't fight all these battles on her own. She must team up with the one person she really can't get along with – the written Thursday Next, currently starring in The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. But it's no time to be picky. . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77416 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 401 pages

Customer Reviews

I always liked time travel stories
Amazon Germany kindly dropped this book into my mail a full week before the official publication date. Considering the novel's plot that once more revolves around various forms of time travel and its paradoxes this could of course just be a marketing scheme worthy of Goliath, indeed, but just as fine with me.
Having said that I just finished the book today, July 5th and it was a good, fluent and certainly entertaining read. The missing footnotes (see Mr Fforde's website for addendum) are a downer, but you can fill in the gaps without much trouble.
As with most of the Thursday Next series, a main plot is hard to make out. Fforde does sidesteps and elongated narratives that are seemingly unrelated to the presumed main story. Without spoilering, most of those ARE indeed connected in the end, yet some remain to be resolved in the next sequel. True to its title, the novel ends with a cliff hanger, so beware. However, I do not feel cheated but am eagerly expecting the next installment.
In all, it has everything one came to love about Thursday Next, treats you to at least three big surprises in best postmodern Fforde fashion, and finishes one of my favorite story elements for good (though you never know with this one...). As sad as this is, it is exercised beautifully. One star deduction, however, for a feeling of "could have been even better" that I did feel during the whole read. Too many things going on maybe while there is no strong antagonist (in other words: no Hades, not really at least) and the one that poses the biggest threat only gets introduced well into the second act.
Summing it up: Ffans will be more than happy to see Thursday return; people who never read any of her adventures before could start with this one - which is a surprise in its own - but I suggest picking up "The Eyre Affair" and work your way up from there.

Amazing
Firstly to all those people who have like me found the lack of footnotes rather irritating. If you go on to Fforde's website he explains that this is a publishing error and everyone is entitled to a free second edition with the footnotes printed. Alternatively the footnotes are also on the website to print out and stick in if you so wish.

Anyway on to the book. There aren't many words to describe how brilliant I think this book is. He has so many ideas that he cleverly weaves together with as little effort as possible. While all the time travel stuff can be somewhat confusing it's comforting to know that Thursday herself also does and as the reader all you need to know is the absolute basics!

If you live in and around Swindon this, and all the books in the series, are especially familiar. The old TK Maxx is mentioned before it moved elsewhere and having been in the store personally makes the story line written about the store even more hilarious, Chippenham is in there too and Devizes, all of which will mean nothing to most people but it's what makes me love it more!

The book leaves you champing at the bit for the next installment (which unfortunately isn't out until 2009!) as the ending is left on a huge cliff hanger leaving you wondering at Thursday's fate.

Anyway this is an absolute must for a Fforde fan. However if you're a newby to this series start at the beginning, it'll make much more sense.

Thursday's back!
After the two Nursery Crime books featuring Jack Spratt this return to the Swindon of Thursday Next feels somewhat slow to start with; of course the inate plot complexity of inter-fiction travel, alternative Swindon, the People's Republic of Wales, the impossibility of time travel and introducing the reader to two fictional versions of Thursday mean quite some time needs to be spent filling in backstory. However once the story gets into full swing its right back to the playful perception flips of the earlier books.
This book is more satisfying than Something Rotten, its predecessor in the series with many teasing little tangents to relish - somebody stealing the jokes out of Thomas Hardy; the funniest books in literature, or the fact that the ChronoGuard could only travel in time because they assumed somebody would be bound to invent time travel at some point in the future.
That said, and whilst I loved the body of the book I was frustrated by an ending that failed to resolve the story and left the reader hanging like at the end of one of those black and white Flash Gordon episodes; cliff hangers are fine if you only have to wait another week for resolution, but two years? Give us a break!
For followers of the series this is a definite must buy, but for a first dip into the world of Jasper Fforde I'd strongly suggest you start with the Eyre Affair (the first Thursday Next book) or The Big Over Easy - a lighter, less complex read featuring stronger characterisation and more laughs.