Jasper Fforde has 3 series ongoing (Thursday Next, Nursery Crime and Shades of Grey) and yet he’s still found time to start a YA fantasy series, The Chronicles of Kazaam. The first book, The Last Dragonslayer, sets up the world and introduces us to the main character, Jennifer Strange, a 15 year old foundling (sort of a cross between an indentured servant and an orphan) who runs a hotel/magic business since the disappearance of her boss, the Great Zambini. But a prophecy foretells great change and there are rumors of a much bigger change coming down the road, Big Magic. Let’s see what happens.
Category Archives: Jasper Fforde
The Woman Who Died A Lot by Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde’s Bookworld novels have expanded from puns and riffs on literary devices and expanded the role of lead Bookworld agent Thursday Next to such an extent that he’s able to have a Bookworld novel that doesn’t get anywhere near Bookworld. The Woman Who Died A Lot is purely a story of Thursday Next, the titular woman who dies a lot in this book (and in the series in general, an her family. I’m excited by this, because it’s obvious that Bookworld is pretty much played out and we need to move into other storylines to keep the series going. Fforde, as always, does a masterful job filling out the story with jokes, puns and witticisms that keep you laughing as the story flies along. So let’s find out how the woman dies a lot.
One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde
In Jasper Fforde’s sixth Thursday Next book, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
Shades of Grey review
Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey
Rule 9.3.88.32.025: “The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable.”
Marriages are arranged to go up the social ladder for prestige, go down the social ladder for money or to strengthen a particular hue in a family line. But when Eddie Russett, a strong Red, finds Jane, a Grey who doesn’t follow the rules, he starts seeing the cracks in society and must decide whether he wants to conform to or question the rules.
Rule 1.1.2.02.03.15: “Marriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse.”
A look back (and forward) at Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde has a new book out, Shades of Grey, which isn’t tied in with either of his previous series
The Thursday Next series consists of 5 books: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten
The books are very heavy into literature jokes (Charles Dickens and Charolotte Bronte are frequent targets) and fantastic interactions between literary characters. Time travel (and time travel paradoxes) play a big part in the series as well. Thursday gains the ability to enter novels and help mediate conflicts and spends a vacation in an unpublished book Caversham Heights(which ties into the Nursery Crime books). The first four books makeup one storyline and First Among Sequels starts a new series (with a new book expected in 2011).
Overall the books are wonderfully funny, with characters from all over interacting in different scenarios. Fforde handles it all with ease. Having said that, the earlier books are much better than the later ones. I was slightly disappointed by First Among Sequels, but not enough to resist reading the new books when they come out.
The Nursery Crime books (The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear) follow the adventures of Detective Jack Spratt of the N
What the Thursday Next books do for literature, the Nursery Crime books do for nursery rhymes. All of the characters are all treated as real and the crimes committed are investigated as a detective novel. They are written as straight detective novels with the humor comes from the scenes and character interactions more than slapstick or funny lines.
The new book, Shades of Grey, looks to follow Fforde’s satirical bent into a new direction. The blurbs make it sound closer to the Thursday Next series only more of a technology direction instead of literature.
This post is part of the thread: Thursday Next – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.