Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
By Jasper Fforde Thorndike Press Large Print (2007)
ISBN 10: 0-7862-9843-X
ISBN 13: 978-0-7862-9843-3
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Reviewed by Auggie Moore - November 19, 2007
Thursday Next is back, and better than ever in Jasper Fforde's new book, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels. In this, the fifth book in the Thursday Next series, our intrepid literary agent is out to discover just who killed Sherlock Holmes at Rhinebeck Falls, and who, exactly, was behind the mysteries and untimely death of Miss Marple. When Thursday herself received a literary death threat, she soon discovers that there is a serial killer on the loose - a killer who is targeting literary characters!
To complicate Thursday life, not only does she have to deal with death threats, serial killers, and bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, but even worse, her son Friday has just turned sixteen and he's driving her insane! She wants him to join the ChronoGuards, but all he wants to do is veg out on the sofa.
As you would expect, Fforde has also thrown in a delightful mix of literary high-jinks including a nogoodnic who is turning classics works of literature in reality TV shows, temporal instabilities, and someone is trying to turn Bookworld into a campy tourist trap - complete with souvenirs! As fate would have it, in this case, the fate of the Next's world rest upon a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
If you are a Thursday Next fan you are in for a real treat. However, if you've never read any of the books in the Next series, I highly recommend that you read at least the first book in the series The Eyre Affair, so that you'll have an idea of how Next's eccentric world is organized and the type of work that Next does as a SpecOps officer. Or should I say, did. Technically the Special Operations division has been disbanded, but Next and her courageous cohorts are still on the job, it's just that they are working behind the scenes as employees of Acme Carpets.
Fforde's books keep getting better. This is satirical, witty, and a cunningly contrived book that pokes fun at both literature and readers, and is full of literary innuendoes and puns. If you like reading a fanciful story that will get you thinking - if about nothing else, illicit cheese - this book is for you!
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels follows Something Rotten, the only Thursday Next book not to be published in large print (boo!). The first three books in the series are, however, available in large print, and I highly recommend that you read them all as this is a deliciously delightful series!
Related Reviews:
The Eyre Affair: A Novel (Book 1), by Jasper Fforde.
Jane Eyre has been kidnaped! Can Thursday Next, a Special Operation's officer in the Literary Detective Division, get Jane back into Bronte's book before it is too late?
Lost in a Good Book (Book 2), By Jasper Fforde.
In the second installment of the Thursday Next saga, Detective Next is blackmailed into going into Poe's The Raven and releasing a nefarious agent from the pages of the story where he has been imprisoned. If she succeeds, the blackmailers have promised to unkill her husband...
The Well of Lost Plots (Book 3), By Jasper Fforde.
In book three of the Thursday Next saga, we find Thursday taking a much needed vacation break in the unpublished book, Caversham Heights. She is still trying to have her husband unkilled, which is the least of her problems. Not only does she have to battle morning sickness, but someone is killing off Jurisfiction officers. Can Thursday stop the killer? Or will she be the next victim?
