science fiction

Author Jasper Fforde continues to prove himself as one of the more creative, clever and original authors of our time with his third book in the Thursday Next series, The Well of Lost Plots. At the end of the last book, Thursday had escaped from the evil corporation Goliath by entering the Book World, the secret universe that exists inside books where fictional characters are more real than the Outsiders who read about them. She is hiding out in the Character Exchange Program, living inside a rather awful, unpublished detective novel. She is hoping to simply have her baby and remember her non-existent husband. (He was eradicated by Goliath.)

Things seldom work out as Thursday plans, however, and she soon finds herself being drawn out of her restful existence. Things start to turn when she is asked by the characters in her book to help them save their novel from being scrapped for salvage. Then there's the dangerous would of Jurisfiction agents. She is still apprenticed to Miss Havisham, of Dickens fame, and her final exam looms. Before she can become a full agent, several other agents are murdered in a ghastly fashion, and it seems that only Thursday and Miss Havisham are willing to seek the truth. Soon, they find that they are targets as well. Will they be able to solve the murders before they end up victims? Will Thursday be able to save the book she has come to call home? And what about those cryptic prophecies from the three witches? As Thursday tries to answer those questions-and more-she journeys from book to book, everything from Sense and Sensibility to Wuthering Heights to Alice in Wonderland. In the end, though, all she really wants is to return to the real world with her life, baby, and husband...and her memory.

As in his first two books, Fforde maintains a brilliantly witty tone throughout the whole story. I laughed out loud so many times I lost count. The Well of Lost Plots feels less structured than his earlier books, and actually reads more like a series of short stories that are loosely connected at best. While it's not as well-plotted as The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, it is still a deliciously fun read, especially for fans of literature. He sprinkles his narrative with so many inside jokes that I'm sure I only caught a small fraction. He also offers up a sharp satire of the publishing world with the Grand Text Central's proposed upgrade to the suspicious UltraWord™, a system that promises to be "the ultimate reading experience" but may be something less than advertised. Jasper Fforde has proven himself once again to be a truly original fantasy writer.

Highly recommended.

In his previous two novels, Fforde created a wacky, fictional universe in which "real world" characters could transport themselves into books, associate with the characters there, turn back the clock, and even change the endings. Heroine Thursday Next, has saved Jane Eyre from disaster, imprisoned Jack Schitt in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," and ended the Crimean War, but she has also made enemies of some powerful criminals, one of whom has gone back in time and killed off her husband when he was just a small child. Now, pregnant, she is the only person who can remember him as an adult, and her memory is failing. Anxious for a rest, she decides to go with her dodo Pickwick to visit the Well of Lost Plots, where all book characters, plots, and settings reside until they are chosen for novels.

In this most literary of Fforde's three novels, Thursday is an apprentice agent-in-training for JurisFiction, the policing agency that works inside books, her mentor and guide being Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. Living inside an unpublished crime thriller, Thursday explores the Great Library, where the Cheshire Cat is librarian, sees the workshop for backstories (some used, some not), meets generic characters ("human canvases without paint") and "orals" (nursery rhyme characters), tours available settings (high-capped mountains, arched stone bridges, ruined castles), and watches as Miss Havisham joyrides in "Chitty Bang Bang." Holesmiths work there fixing holes in narratives, grammatacists try to prevent grammacites (gerunds) and mispeling vyruses from infecting novels, and pace-setters, moodmongers, and plot speculators work on new creations.

As the Well considers installing the UltraWord operating system, which will expand the basic eight-plot architecture into thirty-two plots, Thursday tries to preserve the memory of Landen, fight against her enemies, and win her trial for a fiction infraction. Fforde pulls out all the stops here, creating a carnival ride through books and the creative process with surprises and delights on every page. Less plot-driven than the previous novels, this novel is episodic, with scenes ranging from a Star Wars-type bar scene to a group counseling session for the characters in Wuthering Heights. While Thursday's exact role is not always clear, Fforde's ability to free the reader's imagination and keep him/her involved in the literary world with its infinite possibilities is daunting. Full of satire, parody, puns, literary jokes, and word play, this latest in the Thursday Next series provides hours of entertainment for anyone interested in books and how they "work." Mary Whipple

From the first chapter of Jasper Fforde's third novel, you can tell that the author had a blast writing this satiric mystery that explores the creation of fiction. Thursday Next - pregnant by her eradicated husband, haunted by a Hades sister intent on destroying her memory, and a Jurisfiction apprentice to none other than Miss Havisham of Dickens fame - takes refuge in a poorly written and unpublished crime novel called Caversham Heights. Thursday expects to rest there until the birth of her child, but she and Miss Havisham discover that the death of another agent by a Minotaur attack might not be the accident it seems. Meanwhile, nursery rhyme characters threaten a strike for not being treated like other fictional characters, two generic characters living with Thursday begin to become more well-rounded, and Thursday tries to save Caversham Heights from being destroyed by the Council of Genres for being so hopelessly bad.

The more you know about literature, the more hilarious you'll find this fantasy. Characters are being manufactured in record numbers because Vikram Seth is planning a new novel, and no one wants a return to minimalism simply because of a character shortage. Heathcliff, Catherine, and the rest of the characters from Wuthering Heights attend anger management classes, and Mr. Toad is relentless in his competition with Miss Havisham for the fastest driver in both the Book World and the Outland. And if you're interesting in writing, you'll gain tips for keeping your novel out of the Text Sea, as Fforde pokes fun at hackneyed writing and incomplete character development.

Because this is my first Fforde novel, I started reading this without any knowledge of what has happened previously in the series, but the author provides enough of a synopsis in the beginning to give a new reader the proper bearings. Despite this, there remains a disjointedness at times as so much satire is pumped into the book that does little to advance the plot. Sometimes Thursday seems to be there purely as a straight man, raising the question that perhaps Fforde should have heeded some of his own lessons in fiction writing. Fortunately, these lapses are few and don't hinder the enjoyment of the novel as a whole. This relatively long novel is not demanding and can be read more quickly than the page count might indicate.

As a literary joke, The Well of Lost Plots is a triumph. As a mystery/fantasy, it is less successful. Readers will nonetheless delight in Fforde's imagination as he takes them through the land of the unpublished and the more solid, though more turbulent, ground of the classics.