From Publishers WeeklyIn this delicious sequel to The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, Fforde's redoubtable (and now throwing-up-pregnant) heroine Thursday Next once again does battle with philistine bibliophobes, taking a furlough from her duties as a SpecOps Literary Detective to vacation in the Well of Lost Plots, the 26 noisome sub-basements of the Great Library. Pursued by her memory-modifying nemesis Aornis Hades, Thursday joins Jurisfiction's Character Exchange Program, filling in for "Mary," sidekick to the world-weary detective hero of Caversham Heights, a hilariously awful police procedural. At the imminent launch of UltraWord, the vaunted "Last Word" in Story Operating Systems, Thursday's friend and mentor Miss Havisham is gruesomely killed, and Thursday gamely sets out to restore order to her underground world, where technophiles ruthlessly recycle unpublished books and sell plot devices and stock characters on the black market. Meanwhile, Aornis is doing her fiendish worst to make Thursday forget Landen, her missing husband and father of her child. If this all sounds a bit confusing, it isuntil the reader gets the hang of Fforde's intricate mix of parody, social satire and sheer gut-busting fantasy. Marvelous creations like syntax-slaughtering grammasites and the murderous Minotaur roam this unusual novel's pages, and Fforde's fictional epigraphs, like his minihistory of "book operating systems," are worth the cover price in themselves. Fforde's sidesplitting sendup of an increasingly antibookish society is a sheer joy. Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.From School Library JournalAdult/High SchoolFforde's third novel featuring English sleuth Thursday Next is an interesting, enjoyable mix of detective story, fantasy, and literature. Thursday works on cases involving the protection of the stories and characters of famous books, which can be affected and changed by people in the real world. In this installment, she enters the Book World itself. Fforde has a nice touch, never pressing on any one aspect of the story, but managing to interweave all of the elements, with a good deal of humor. The use of various literary characters means that it helps to be familiar with the works in which they appear, but, despite knowing very little about Anna Karenina, it is still very funny to read its plot written as a gossipy telephone conversation between two Russian noblewomen. It also helps to have read the first two books in the series, The Eyre Affair (2002) and Lost in a Good Book(2003, both Viking), but teens will want to read The Well of Lost Plotsanyway.Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.From BooklistAnyone who thinks there's really nothing new in fiction hasn't been reading Fforde's wildly inventive, genre-bending Thursday Next series. Next is a detective who inhabits a fantasy-world Britain in which literature is very much alive--so alive, in fact, that it takes a dedicated machinery of justice to keep the plots in order and the characters in place. After rescuing a kidnapped Jane Eyre in The Eyre Affair (2002) and battling an evil multinational corporation seeking to exploit the world of fiction in Lost in a Good Book (2003), Next has beaten a strategic retreat into BookWorld, where as part of the Character Exchange Program, she hides out in an unpublished, by-the-numbers police procedural. She's pregnant, her husband has been killed before he really existed, and her memories of him are being eaten away by a mindworm. She can't rest for long, however; she's still a trainee agent in the BookWorld police force, JurisFiction, and soon fiction itself is under a greater threat than ever before. Fforde is a terrifically agile writer, and his central conceit--that books are not constructed by authors but by a busy parallel world of goofy but industrious creatures--allows him to deck this tasty cake of a book with seemingly endless layers. Amid the humor, wordplay, and fun with fiction's conventions, there's both a decent mystery and a book lover's plea to save the world's messiness from corporate streamlining. This will surely delight bookworms--and real people, too. Keir GraffCopyright American Library Association. All rights reserved can you blog about books The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next Series)
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Up Next: Get lost in the frivolity of The Well of Lost PlotsBy Bobby MatherneThe Ffunny man Fforde is back and no dramatic clich will go unpunished or unused, no plot device will appear, whether in a paper bag or sealed in glass orb, without being used, no one will be left wondering why Godot never showed up or what Miss Havisham did in her spare time, or why there is alphabet soup, but no singular for scampi!Whenever Thursday is asking how things are going for her, her answer usually sums up her activity quite well. The responses she receives from her summations are usually droll -- witness this exchange with the Cat formerly known as Cheshire, who asks her, "How are you getting along?"[page 71] "I'm not sure," I replied. "I was attacked by grammasites, threatened by Big Martin's friends and a Thraal. I've got two Generics billeted with me, the characters in Caversham Heights think I can save their book and right now I have to give the Minotaur his breakfast." "Nothing remarkable there. Anything else?"Thus demonstrated, it leaves me only to say that nothing remarkable happens in this book. Actually most of the remarkable action happens in "Caversham Heights" where Thursday Next is thought to be an Outlander by the characters of the BookWorld. What a surprise they have coming to them when Hollywood makes a movie of them and they become movie stars with the same status as Thursday!Enough of this frivolity, let's open the book and get lost in the frivolity of The Well of Lost Plots with Thursday. Will she pass her Jurisfiction Agent test and practicum? Will she save the world of reading from being the stage for recycled (Can you say stolen?) ideas for the fun and profit of Text Grand Central and the mega-business which controls the BookWorld?Just remember this: to BookWorlders, you are an Outlander, and as such you are entitled by your own birthright to outlandish ideas, no matter how mundane you otherwise consider your ideas or lack of them to be. So, buy a copy of this book, beginning reading, and enter the very world which will consider you as Outlandish! Still don't feel outlandish enough to tackle the book, read my frivolous review. Caution: it may change your mind about the propriety or advisability of being outlandish.After all the entire population of BookWorld already considers you to be outlandish.The remainder of my review can be found via DIGESTWORLD ISSUE#06c. Bobby Matherne0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Jasper Fforde breaks all molds. For anyone who loves ...By KwebJasper Fforde breaks all molds. For anyone who loves the corpus of English Literature, the Thursday Next series is essential reading. Even if the style of Fforde's books seems frothier then what you normally read, don't stop. The content of these books, taken cumulatively, is stunning and life-altering... no one else has ever explored the role literature plays in the psyche of the human species the way Fforde does. You'll keep thinking that every book has exhausted the ways in which the author can surprise you, and the subsequent book in the series always proves you wrong. Well of Lost Plots is #3. There are now seven books inn the series and clearly Fforde envisions at least an eighth... I hope he never stops.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. My favorite author having funBy R-SquaredJasper Fforde's novels can be found in mystery, comedy, fantasy, sci-fi, and literature. Not because he writes so many distinct types, but because each reader and even each bookseller has a different POV on how best to describe Fforde's engaging, witty, action-oriented, layered, multi-layered stories."The Well of Lost Plots" (TWoLP) is one of my favorite installments in Fforde's Thursday Next series. The Well is set in the BookWorld, the alternate universe where stories live and fuel our reading experiences. This novel is fun, smart, smarta**, and heartfelt. If you love books and are widely read, you will particularly enjoy the heroine Thursday's interaction with so-called fictional characters. They seem very alive, here.TWoLP can be read alone, although reading it in order with the other Tuesday Next books certainly adds depth and insight to your journey with Fforde. Jasper Fforde has other series running, including Nursery Crime which spins off most particularly from TWoLP.