Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde is hysterical, but I can only recommend it to bibliophiles, and potentially only English majors. I laugh, because I’ve read Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and all the authors that they clever dabble with. But if not well versed, I could see a billion of the jokes flying over the head of the reader. It’s how I feel whenever I watch a BBC show. I’m probably losing half the humor in translation.
Thursday Next works for SPEC-OPS 27: The Literary Division, which polices the Bookworld. She prevents characters from diverting from the story as told or leaping into other books, maintains the integrity so that whole chapters don’t mysteriously disappears, and watches for outside interference. It’s of the same ilk as Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide series, same dry wit and intelligent humor. But as I said, it often references literary works that not everyone has read. Also, it deals with time travel in hilarious and ridiculous ways.
First Among Sequels is Book Six in the series, though its actually the fifth story, because Book Five gets erased during the course of the story. It deals with Thursday’s attempts to get her son to join the ChronoGuard, which he has already done, but must still do to keep the timeline accurate. Also, she is surreptitiously training her BookWorld apprentice, Thursday5, the Thursday Next from Book 5: The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco. All while keeping this from her husband, who doesn’t know she’s still working underground for the BookWorld.
It was an enjoyable romp through old territory, because the series ended in the 1980’s of its time, and now it’s dealing with Thursday’s own self-references. She’s got to deal now with herself as a character as written by someone else. It’s a concept I can’t recall the name of, but it goes like this: In the world of a Harrison Ford movie, can he rent Raiders of the Lost Ark? They deal with this in The Last Action Hero; Sylvester Stallone plays all the Arnold Schwarzenegger parts. Well in this world, Thursday Next has retired 12 years ago (allegedly) and now she has to deal with all the unwanted attention that leads to, particularly in the literary adaptations. Specifically as the character of Thursday1-4 comes up, who is the hyperaggressive, sexually compulsive Thursday of the first four books.
If you like Austen and Bronte, I would suggest picking up The Eyre Affair and starting in on the series. I’m planning on checking out his other character, Jack Spratt, the detective of the Nursery Crimes world. I hear it’s not as good a series, but I’ll give it a whirl.
