Jasper Fforde is a Genius!

If you have not heard of British author Jasper Fforde and you love to read, this is the day that your life has changed forever. Okay, that might be a bit of an overstatement, but you must look into his two sets of novels. Start with the Thursday Next series: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten (a fifth installment is due out this summer). The series follows Thursday Next, a SpecOps LitDective who deals in a world where forged copies of Shakespeare are a great in demand and the debate rages over Bacon and Marlowe. Thursday is an intrepid and fearless officer and finds herself in a much deeper world of books and story as Fforde cleverly furthers her own. If you love words and novels you may find yourself in love with Thursday and her alternate universe, complete with Dodos, a Crimean War that has lasted for over 120 years, a long-lost love interest and one of most devious arch nemeses you will ever read of... did I mention Shakespeare? Mr Rochester also makes an appearance in this book, in case you didn't catch that with the title.

I just finished reading Lost in a Good Book, the second installment in the Next Series. It seems love is not long with Thursday, but she is a determined and finds herself in a mad rush to rescue her beloved, begin her training as a JurisFiction operative, clear her name of severe charges against the always looming Goliath Corporation, and save the world from destruction by a mysterious pink goo. Can she do? Well, there's always the third book...

I've mentioned Fforde before on this blog, and his Nursery Crime Series. There are two reading strategies: read The Big Over Easy First and then start the Next Series. Or wait for the Nursery Crime Series until you've finished the third Next book. The first is what I've done... writing a book out of a plot you've already devised, with a set of characters you have already begun to develop is brilliant. Most likely also incredibly hard. The second book in the series, The Fourth Bear, I have not yet read. But you must read Jasper Fforde!