FIRST AMONG SEQUELS: A Thursday Next Novel
Jasper Fforde
Penguin
Mystery
Hardcover: 0670038717
Paperback: 9780143113560

Thursday Next has fallen on hard times now that Special Ops, particularly her Literary Crimes Division, has been dismantled and shelved. She is constantly pestered by fans of the unauthorized novels of her adventures. Her 16-year-old son, Friday, is a shiftless layabout who seems determined to wallow in a pool of morose morbidity. Her pet dodo is having problems. She has been relegated to the menial task of installing carpets to make ends meet. And she has also resorted to selling black market cheese.

At least that's what she'd like everyone to believe.

Instead, Acme Carpets is nothing more than a front for the underground continuation of Special Ops. The Literary Crimes Division, however, has not been seeing any work. People just don't read anymore. The world at large is more interested in movies, video games, the Internet and reality television. As the reading interest falls, England has found itself in the grip of a growing Stupidity Surplus. Through it all, she has been able to keep her secret under wraps.

That all changes when a killer begins to target famous literary giants. Sherlock Holmes is murdered and Miss Marple is likewise slain. And the assailant also sets his sights on Thursday. Or is he targeting alternate Thursdays who exist in the Bookworld? As the dreaded Goliath Corporation prepares for mass book tourism, allowing visitors to enter and tour the worlds of Jane Austen, Thursday has to team up with the one person she really can't stand in order to prevent calamitous results: her book self.

Jasper Fforde once again hits a home run with FIRST AMONG SEQUELS. The fifth book in this series can stand proudly on its own, but it does provide a much better experience if you've gone through Thursday's previous trials and tribulations with her. Like his others in the line, this installment is a completely satisfying and page-turning read, one you feel compelled to continue even as the hours drift by.

It's not just his sense of humor, the fun plot, or the intriguing characters that pull you along. It's the very thought that books are valuable and important, and that they are being besieged in the better-faster-quicker generation by all forms of entertainment that gratify now-now-now. This is a menace that Fforde seems to understand and believe is very real.

"In these days of junk TV, short attention spans and easy-to-digest sound bites, it seemed that the book, the noble device to which both Bowden and I had devoted much of our lives, was being marginalized into just another human storytelling experience also ran..." So laments Thursday, echoing a concern of her world that is also one much discussed here in ours.

"Besides, no one's reading books much anymore, so I'm fairly redundant," she confesses.

With this outstanding piece of work, it would be an absolute travesty if that were true. Fforde once again proves that books are valuable entertainment that need not go the way of the dodo.

    --- Reviewed by Stephen Hubbard

Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.

© Copyright 1996-2008, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.

Back to top.