Lost In A Good Book by Jasper Fforde
A Thursday Next Novel After Deborah
reviewed The Well Of Lost Plots, I thought that I ought to read a book by Jasper Fforde, and the one available when I looked was
Lost In A Good Book. So Deborah reviewed the third book and I'm about to review the second and we are going backwards.
Deborah says that
Lost In A Book stands alone well, which might be true, but reading this without having first read
The Eyre Affair was confusing, especially as it kept being reffered to. Deborah's review ought to be helpful in being not so disoriented by the setting.
Thursday finds from her father that the world will turn into pink goo on December 12th, 1985(she lives in an alternate universe and is in 1985). She learns this as a series of strange coincidences almost take her life. Her eccentric inventor uncle gives her an entroposcope, which is supposed to measure the likelihood of coicidental happenings. Two more times, when coincidences happen, Thursday narrowly avoids dying. It turns out that the coincidences are being engineered by the sister of the villain whom Thursday defeated in
The Eyre Affair. Her ultimate coinncidence is planned to wipe out power and all three generators stopping a nanobot orange cream topping from reproducing uncontrollably. Thursday's father interferes and saves the world, although I don't really understand how; he goes back to the beggining of the world to change something.
This book has a far too complicated a plot to do it justice in a review. Keeping track of all of the characters can be a little confusing, but they will quickly remind you. Thursday spends a lot of this book going into the worlds of other books, but it was not until I started writing this that I realize that that part of the plot doesn't really have anything to do with saving the world. This book reminds me strongly of Terry Pratchett's books. They're both humourous, happen in a different but familiar reality, have lots of coincidences, and are written by British authors.
Happy reading.
