29 June 2014

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

Lost in a Good Book is the second installment in the Thursday Next series. In it we are reacquainted with many of the characters from The Eyre Affair.

Literary detective Thursday Next is living a contented life, and then something - or, rather, several things, several very odd things - go wrong, and Thursday is in a whole lot of trouble with just about everyone. To make matters worse, she gets a special sneak preview of the end of the world.

Like the previous novel, Lost in a Good Book is set in a world much like our own, except the year is 1985, there are supernatural bogies and beasties on the loose, some of the humans have superhuman powers, while some of other humans aren't as human as they seem.

Fforde has expanded and added detail to his fantasy world.  Thursday is now able to enter novels and poems by force of will, and she finds that inside these literary works there are worlds that have as much beauty, terror and politics as our own and her own.

While this book got off to a rather prolonged and slow start, once the action started going and the plot began to ripen, it became quite an enjoyable, funny and absorbing story.  It suffered in comparison to its predecessor as it did not have strong central bad guy, but this is only a minor flaw.  Overall, it is a worthy and entertaining book, and I am very much looking forward to reading the next in the series.

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