The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

Title: The Well of Lost Plots
Author: Jasper Fforde
Publisher: High Bridge
Rating: WARTY!

I was thrilled to see that this audio novel was read by Elizabeth Sastre, as was the previous volume, but after the first disk, even Sastre's charming voice and thoroughly British inflection couldn't save this. Pretty much the entire first disk was boring!

Thursday has been moved into an unpublished work of fiction titled Caversham Heights wherein she lives on an old Sunderland Flying Boat. Jurisfiction's plan is to hide her away until she has her baby. Landon still hasn't been actualized, so she's on her own, working in the novel as an assistant to detective Jack Sprat. She shares the houseboat with two generic characters which she names Ib and Ob, and with her grandmother who comes to stay with her during her quite literal confinement. There are some mildly entertaining parts where she tries to teach Ib and Ob - bland characters being stockpiled for when they're needed in a new novel, - the rudiments of writing (irony, subtext, sarcasm, etc.) but other than that it's not interesting at all.

I had really hoped that disk two would pick things up, but it didn't. Disk two was as bad as disk one: some titters here and there, but nothing overtly funny and certainly nothing interesting. It's like Fforde is simply parading every rough idea he had for an amusing chapter in this volume, without actually making it amusing, and with no regard to tying any of this into an over-arching plot. Fforde now has the space of one more disk in which to impress me! yes, it's ultimatum time! Life is far too short to waste even on the average, let alone on the poor, so if disk three fails, then the series does, because this is the last of Fforde's novels I plan on following until and unless he brings out a sequel to Shades of Grey.

Well I made it to disk 4 and found that I was bored out of my gourd. I skipped track after track because it was uninteresting and decided that was it for this warty novel.

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

Title: Lost in a Good Book
Author: Jasper Fforde
Publisher: High Bridge
Rating: worthy

This audio novel is read by Elizabeth Sastre.

After a sad disappointment in the first novel in this series, The Eyre Affair, I'm hoping for a lot better in volume 2. Failing that, I'll ditch this series and move on to something else. I have to say I was surprised by High Bridge, the audio publishers of the copy I got from the library. When I went to their website to reference this novel, I could find neither the title nor the author anywhere on their site! That's why Barnes & Noble gets the book link.

I was really slow in getting up to speed on this one because of Thanksgiving, but I picked up the pace today and didn't regret it. This one is much better than The Eyre Affair, at least through the first half-dozen chapters. It's much more interesting and a lot funnier, particularly the Hispano-Suiza episode. Of course it doesn't hurt at all that Elizabeth Sastre (not to be confused with Doctor Elizabeth Sastre of the Vanderbilt university medical school) is intelligent, playful, sly, sexy, and a little bit giggly. I love this representation of Thursday.

There's apparently a plot afoot in this novel to assassinate Thursday which, if true, cannot be allowed to succeed under any circumstances! Even if I quit reading the series I would feel saddened if she were not out there somewhere, even if it's just fictionally! The plot comes to a head when the Goliath corporation removes her husband Landon from time, leaving her pregnant in a time when the father of her child died at the age of two! Their plan is to have her free Jack Schitt from Poe's The Raven where she evidently imprisoned him at the end of the last novel, but she has no means to travel into fiction any more, so what's a girl to do?

Fforde continues to exhibit the occasional problem with the English language. For example, at several points, he writes of the Goliath corporation starting his sentence with "Goliath are..." whereas it should be "Goliath is…" At one point (I think in chapter eight) he writes that some people "...leaned forward imperceptibly..." - and this in a novel which is narrated in first person PoV. If the movement was imperceptible, how did the narrator detect it?!

Fforde also seems not to quite grasp a crucial principle of the geometric theory of gravitation, published by Albert Einstein in 1916. People who are undergoing acceleration perceive the effect as gravity. An acceleration of 1G will be indistinguishable from Earth's gravity to those experiencing it. Therefore passengers availing themselves of Fforde's gravity drop transportation system - even if it could be built through Earth's core without melting, and without killing travelers from radiation - would not experience free-fall because of the acceleration!

Finally it looks like I'm getting to the very reason I decided to start this series in the first place! Thursday gets an "in" to the magic library! I was not at all impressed by the disaster of the Cheshite Cat, but I did like Mrs Haversham and the Red Queen - particularly the enigmatic Red Queen, and the whole episode with Spike on the Zombie hunt, which Thursday volunteers for so she can pay her rent with the overtime-rate cash was hilarious.

And this was too much! I went to open the file for this review and this is what I found in the folder listing:

Thursday on Thursday! How sweet is that? Must be a good omen!

This one managed to hold my attention and amuse me. It's still not as good as One of Our Thursdays is Missing but it is a worthy read.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Title: The Eyre Affair
Author: Jasper Fforde
Publisher: Audible
Rating: WARTY!

This audio novel was very ably narrated by Susan Duerden.

I've already reviewed Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey and One of Our Thursdays is Missing, both of which I found hilarious.

Unfortunately, this novel fell far short of those two; after I'd listened to the first disk I was not impressed at all. By the end of the first disk in One of Our Thursdays is Missing I was already searching the car for my ass, which I'd laughed off. I couldn't find it, so I had to laugh that off, too. Did I make a big mistake in starting the Thursday next series not at the beginning? Is disappointment and regret going to haunt me over this? Only Time Will Tell, and the next edition of that magazine isn't due for a while....

Disk 2 was better, but it still wasn't funny; it reads (listens?) just like a regular thriller. I can now understand why people who read the series from the start suddenly took a dislike to One of Our Thursdays is Missing, because it was really quite a departure from the format of this, the first novel in the series. I think If I'd started this series where it ought to be started, with this volume, I might not have even ventured far enough to read that latter novel, having seen what the earlier ones were like, so I'm glad I read that one out of order! By the time I reached disk 6 (60% in, in ebook terms, around page 210 in real book terms) I was really beginning to tire of this. Yes, it had some lol moments, but in general it was a bit tedious, with nothing very funny happening in general, and nothing really engrossing going on at all. Thursday Next is merely going through the motions, and it was neither a thriller nor a mystery at that point.

In this novel, Thursday (the real world Thursday, that is) is up against Acheron Hades, an arch villain who seems to be able to change his physical appearance at will and at whim, and who is evidently immune to bullets - unlike Thursday who ends up in hospital, shot twice by Hades. Her life was saved by a copy of Jane Eyre which was in her "breast pocket" and which stopped the bullet. This is particularly meaningful to Thursday, because she recalls, as a child, visiting the British Library where the original handwritten copy of Jane Eyre resides, and she ends up in the novel briefly. It was her very presence which caused Rochester's horse to shy when he first meets Eyre! It's also an important point because later, Thursday ventures into Eyre (which in her world does not end like it does in ours) and changes things around a bit so it has the familiar ending. It was that which was championed in the blurb and it was for that reason that I wanted to read it. Unfortunately, the blurb once again lied! More anon.

After Thursday leaves hospital, having recovered somewhat from her, er, shooting pains, two bizarre incidents occur. In the first, she sees her older self in a car, and that other self warns her that Hades is still alive (contrary to police reports that he died in a car accident) and that she should take a job in Swindon, even though it's something of a demotion for her. She resolves to take this advice. She also learns that a man helped save her life after she was shot, and she has reason to believe that this man was Rochester from Eyre. No, not from Eire, from Eyre.... So yes, not at all funny, but really interesting!

As I continued to listen in on Next's adventures, I did grow very fond of Susan Duerden's reading, but even that endearing and warming voice wasn't enough to keep my interest in this novel. While there were some very good bits, those were few and far between, and that far between was filled with tedious run-of-the-mill story-telling which seemed to be going nowhere, and which held no interest for me. As I mentioned, I was looking for the trip to Eyre (not Eire! I've already been to Eire), which refused to turn up!

The most LoL moment, I have to say, was on page 82 where Thursday is accosted at Swindon airport(!) by two students who are handing out anti-Crimea war propaganda. Thursday speaks first:

"I'm not here with the colonel. It was a coincidence."
"I don't believe in coincidences"
"Neither do I. That's a coincidence, isn't it?"

But you have to hear it from Duerden, I think, to really feel it in your funny bone like I did! Contrastingly, there is some really bad writing cropping up, such as, in the chapter header quotation for chapter 20. I routinely skip those things in novels having no interest whatsoever in chapter header quotations, but Duerden reads them, so I was forced to listen. In the real book, Fforde writes, "There are a superabundance of these in the English language." and this is what Duerden read, and I have to say that it's a shameful display of poor grammar from a professional writer.

So as I mentioned, at about 60% in I was tiring of it, and at 70% in, with no hint of Next's supposed visit to Eyre precipitating any time soon, I called it. The novel quite simply was not good enough for me to continue to wait for something to which I'd been looking forward since chapter one, and which the book blurb had quite puffed-up into a major part of the novel. It evidently was not. Would it happen in the next paragraph, or would it not come until the last chapter? The suspense was boring the pants off me (not a good thing to happen whilst driving, let me tell you.... I just lost interest in waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I'd understood that Next would go into Eyre and hilarity would ensue. It hasn't. Not by that point, and I was tired of sitting around wasting my time until it did. Life's too short to waste on un-engaging novels when there are so many out there (in my to-read list at right) begging to be enjoyed!

Like I said, I loved the first two Fforde novels I read, but this one just wasn't in the same league as the others. I plan on reading one more in this series - the next one in line - but this one is a WARTY!