One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Jasper Fforde (author)

Hoddger & Stoughton, UK: 2011

ISBN: 9780340963081

Genres: adventure, fantasy, humour

Issues: imagination

advanced concepts, vocabulary

The BookWorld has been Remade and its entire fabric altered – mostly for the better. But it's also a time of great unrest, with threats of a devastating genre war. A week before the peace talks, Thursday Next, one of Jurisfiction's greatest agents, has disappeared.

Has she simply returned to her RealWorld husband and family or is it possible that somebody is trying to assassinate her? Can the Fictional Thursday Next live up to her namesake's reputation and unravel the sinister plot in time to save BookWorld?

Fforde's capacity to reinvent BookWorld and all its wonders is astounding. Those already familiar with Text Grand Central, the Council of Genres, Jurisfiction and all the wonderful gadgetry that goes with it (such as footnoterphones and transgenre taxis) will find themselves astonished once again by Fforde's apparently limitless imagination. Sophisticated and experienced readers will laugh out loud at the embedded commentary about story in general and certain genres, books and characters in particular and the glorious, Fry-esque blathering beauty of the ingenious nonsense. The new map of BookWorld alone is worth studying at your leisure – and with a magnifying glass.

Must read. Must read. Must read.

'Dark Reading Matter: the hypothetical last resting place of books never published, ideas never penned and poems held only in the heart by poets who died without passing them on. Theoretical Bibliologists have proved that the Background Story Radiation was appreciably more than the apparent quantity of STORY in the BookWorld. No one had any idea where it might be or how you could reach it. DRM's existence remained theoretical at best.' Bradshaw's BookWorld Companion, 4th Edition (p173)

Warning: for the first time this series, Fforde has produced a book that will be confusing for readers unfamiliar with at least a couple of the first five books but particularly First Among Sequels.