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I just finished reading the first three books in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, and they are... well. It's a bit tough to describe what they are. They are offbeat/absurdist comedy, alternative history, cop drama, science fiction/fantasy (yes, both), and, in large part, meta-crossover fanfiction.
The heroine, Thursday Next, is a literary detective. In this world--an alternative history version of 1985 Britain where the Crimean War is still going on and literature is taken very, very seriously--literary detectives are a Special Operations department. They are largely involved in stuff like stopping unauthorized editions of books from being circulated and investigating literary scams (like forged first editions, and people pretending to have discovered Shakespeare's lost play, Cardenio). People in this world go to performances of Richard III like it's Rocky Horror--audience cast members, props, audience participation lines, costumes, the whole thing.
In the first book, The Eyre Affair, Acheron Hades, the world's third most evil man, steals the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, goes inside it and kidnaps Jane. It's up to Thursday to restore the novel and defeat Acheron. Somehow this turns into a ridiculously twisty plot involving vampire-hunting, Thursday's time-traveling father (who technically doesn't exist), ending the Crimean War, Very Deep And Sad backstory involving old boyfriends and Thursday's dead brother, Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft, William Wordsworth being a lech, and bookworms. This book is probably best if you've read Jane Eyre.
In the second book, Lost in a Good Book, there are more or less three plots: one involving her time-traveling father and the Earth turning into unidentifiable pink sludge sometime in the future, one involving Thursday's husband Landen getting "eradicated"--meaning someone went back in time and killed him off very young, so their whole history together now only exists in Thursday's memory--and one involving Cardenio and the literary police agency inside the books. They're called Jurisfiction, and they sort of reminded me of The Protectors of the Plot Continuum. Thursday gets apprenticed to Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, and it's awesome. I cannot even begin to describe how awesome it is.
In the third book, The Well of Lost Plots, Thursday is basically attempting to hide out in the subbasement where unpublished novels live, in this particular case, living in a really bad unpublished crime thriller. She is determined to get her husband un-eradicated somehow, especially because she is somehow--despite his now never having existed--still pregnant with his child. There is a lot of really crazy world-building about the Bookworld and how it is run; I think Jasper Fforde may have had a little too much fun with that, actually. But there is still plot, and as usual, it's multiple really crazy plots. The main ones are Thursday trying to save Caversham Heights (the terrible crime thriller draft she's living in) from getting reduced to text, Thursday trying to stop Acheron Hades' little sister from erasing her memories, and something involving several murders and a proposed new story operating system called UltraWord(TM).
One of the things about this series that (a) I really liked and (b) I was very pleased that I didn't even realize until like halfway through the third book because they didn't do that awkward nineties "HEY LOOK HOW PROGRESSIVE WE'RE BEING GIVE ME A COOKIE" call-out thing, was the gender reversal of the Damsel in Distress/Women in Refrigerators tropes. Landen is pretty cool, but he's not really a very big character most of the time, and is rarely involved in the action-action (like, the time-traveling and shooting people and jumping in and out of books action). He's mostly influential in just the emotional subplots, mostly involving the Crimean War and Thursday's brother in the first book, and in the second and third books he only exists in Thursday's memory for most of it. His entire function is basically just The Love Interest, and therefore terrible things happen to him in order to spur Thursday on to do stuff about it. Eradication puts him sort of midway between being In Distress and In The Fridge--eradication is a particularly nasty sort of murder, since it erases the whole life before it. On the other hand, because it is dependent on time-travel, it can, theoretically be undone through time travel as well, making him not permanently murdered--just in need of being rescued from being murdered. But because he is already dead, he really can't do anything to help himself: it's all up to Thursday. (The memory of Landen is occasionally useful in the memory-related drama, but also can't do that much to stop himself from being forgotten.) I am trying to think of other stories where there are male characters whose only function is to help the female lead mature emotionally and then get his arse in trouble so she has to get all mad and rescue him, and I am failing. Any suggestions?
The thing I'm most interested about in Landen's eradication hasn't been addressed, though, which is: since Landen is an author, when he gets eradicated, what happened to all the books he wrote? Jasper Fforde, I really hope you address this later!
Anyway, other things this book series has that I love:
-Lots of references to classical literature
-Lots of text-based humor: footnotes, misspellings, characters referencing the exact wording on the page, and lots of fun with speech tags. I never knew speech tags could be that amusing!
-Really strange alternative history
-Will-Speak machines!
-The ultimate book-nerd fantasy of being able to jump into works of fiction, somehow without turning into a lot of wankish Mary-Sueing
-Plot points where you totally know where they are going to end up, but where the author manages to keep you guessing all the way to the end about how in Jane Austen's name they're going to get there. These are fun to read and really, really, really hard to write. I get so excited when people pull it off.
-Kickass old ladies (Thursday's grandma; Miss Havisham)
-Metafiction, especially lampshade-hanging. This is a book about books, and they talk a lot about book tropes and plot devices, sometimes when they're happening, and at one point a plotsmith even lampshades lampshade-hanging.
-Dodos
This is very much a word nerd's series, and a literature nerd's series. I would strongly recommend it for anyone who is a big dork about that sort of thing.
In related news, don't forget what's coming out in March!
(I would embed this but I seem to be having problems.)
As Thursday said, JANE EYRE IS FOR ALL TIME.
The heroine, Thursday Next, is a literary detective. In this world--an alternative history version of 1985 Britain where the Crimean War is still going on and literature is taken very, very seriously--literary detectives are a Special Operations department. They are largely involved in stuff like stopping unauthorized editions of books from being circulated and investigating literary scams (like forged first editions, and people pretending to have discovered Shakespeare's lost play, Cardenio). People in this world go to performances of Richard III like it's Rocky Horror--audience cast members, props, audience participation lines, costumes, the whole thing.
In the first book, The Eyre Affair, Acheron Hades, the world's third most evil man, steals the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, goes inside it and kidnaps Jane. It's up to Thursday to restore the novel and defeat Acheron. Somehow this turns into a ridiculously twisty plot involving vampire-hunting, Thursday's time-traveling father (who technically doesn't exist), ending the Crimean War, Very Deep And Sad backstory involving old boyfriends and Thursday's dead brother, Sherlock Holmes' brother Mycroft, William Wordsworth being a lech, and bookworms. This book is probably best if you've read Jane Eyre.
In the second book, Lost in a Good Book, there are more or less three plots: one involving her time-traveling father and the Earth turning into unidentifiable pink sludge sometime in the future, one involving Thursday's husband Landen getting "eradicated"--meaning someone went back in time and killed him off very young, so their whole history together now only exists in Thursday's memory--and one involving Cardenio and the literary police agency inside the books. They're called Jurisfiction, and they sort of reminded me of The Protectors of the Plot Continuum. Thursday gets apprenticed to Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, and it's awesome. I cannot even begin to describe how awesome it is.
In the third book, The Well of Lost Plots, Thursday is basically attempting to hide out in the subbasement where unpublished novels live, in this particular case, living in a really bad unpublished crime thriller. She is determined to get her husband un-eradicated somehow, especially because she is somehow--despite his now never having existed--still pregnant with his child. There is a lot of really crazy world-building about the Bookworld and how it is run; I think Jasper Fforde may have had a little too much fun with that, actually. But there is still plot, and as usual, it's multiple really crazy plots. The main ones are Thursday trying to save Caversham Heights (the terrible crime thriller draft she's living in) from getting reduced to text, Thursday trying to stop Acheron Hades' little sister from erasing her memories, and something involving several murders and a proposed new story operating system called UltraWord(TM).
One of the things about this series that (a) I really liked and (b) I was very pleased that I didn't even realize until like halfway through the third book because they didn't do that awkward nineties "HEY LOOK HOW PROGRESSIVE WE'RE BEING GIVE ME A COOKIE" call-out thing, was the gender reversal of the Damsel in Distress/Women in Refrigerators tropes. Landen is pretty cool, but he's not really a very big character most of the time, and is rarely involved in the action-action (like, the time-traveling and shooting people and jumping in and out of books action). He's mostly influential in just the emotional subplots, mostly involving the Crimean War and Thursday's brother in the first book, and in the second and third books he only exists in Thursday's memory for most of it. His entire function is basically just The Love Interest, and therefore terrible things happen to him in order to spur Thursday on to do stuff about it. Eradication puts him sort of midway between being In Distress and In The Fridge--eradication is a particularly nasty sort of murder, since it erases the whole life before it. On the other hand, because it is dependent on time-travel, it can, theoretically be undone through time travel as well, making him not permanently murdered--just in need of being rescued from being murdered. But because he is already dead, he really can't do anything to help himself: it's all up to Thursday. (The memory of Landen is occasionally useful in the memory-related drama, but also can't do that much to stop himself from being forgotten.) I am trying to think of other stories where there are male characters whose only function is to help the female lead mature emotionally and then get his arse in trouble so she has to get all mad and rescue him, and I am failing. Any suggestions?
The thing I'm most interested about in Landen's eradication hasn't been addressed, though, which is: since Landen is an author, when he gets eradicated, what happened to all the books he wrote? Jasper Fforde, I really hope you address this later!
Anyway, other things this book series has that I love:
-Lots of references to classical literature
-Lots of text-based humor: footnotes, misspellings, characters referencing the exact wording on the page, and lots of fun with speech tags. I never knew speech tags could be that amusing!
-Really strange alternative history
-Will-Speak machines!
-The ultimate book-nerd fantasy of being able to jump into works of fiction, somehow without turning into a lot of wankish Mary-Sueing
-Plot points where you totally know where they are going to end up, but where the author manages to keep you guessing all the way to the end about how in Jane Austen's name they're going to get there. These are fun to read and really, really, really hard to write. I get so excited when people pull it off.
-Kickass old ladies (Thursday's grandma; Miss Havisham)
-Metafiction, especially lampshade-hanging. This is a book about books, and they talk a lot about book tropes and plot devices, sometimes when they're happening, and at one point a plotsmith even lampshades lampshade-hanging.
-Dodos
This is very much a word nerd's series, and a literature nerd's series. I would strongly recommend it for anyone who is a big dork about that sort of thing.
In related news, don't forget what's coming out in March!
(I would embed this but I seem to be having problems.)
As Thursday said, JANE EYRE IS FOR ALL TIME.
