Book Review: The Well of Lost Plots

The Well of Lost Plots
A Thursday Next Novel
by Jasper Fforde
Rating: 5 starts out of 5
"it was amazing"

It is true: Fforde gets better and better with each book! This is number 3 in the Thursday Next Series and I enjoyed it the most (so far).

There is so much detail I hardly know where to begin. Our last book left us off with Thursday pregnant and her husband eradicated. She decided to take a vacation and go somewhere safe to have this baby, where the Goliath Corporation cannot touch her. Only there is no place in her world they cannot touch... so she must leave her world and enter the Book World. Thursday decides to particpate it the Character Exchange program and resides in a book that is still being written in The Well of Lost Plots. She is also apprenticed to Mrs. Havisham, of Great Expectations, at Jurisfiction (the book world policing agency).

As usual where Thursday goes trouble will find her. This time a new and improved Operating System for the book world is about to be unleashed. It's perfect. It will be the ultimate reading experience! Except the Jurisfiction agents assigned to test out the new system are dying in what appears to be normal everyday accidents. At the same time Thursday is fighting off Aornis Hades who is out for revenge for her brother's death. Aornis is a mnemonomorph capable of altering anothers memories, slowly she is removing all memories of Thursdays husband. Thursday finds herself fighting the BookWorld enemies by day and Aornis by night.

There are 2 things I love about this book. First the attention to detail Fforde uses. There were so many little seemingly insignificant things that all managed to come into play at some point in the book. Clever. Brilliant.

Secondly is the style of writing. There's only one way to know what I am talking about, and that is with a sample that had me laughing and confused and rereading a number of times. This will be taken out of context, but all you need to know is Jurisfiction is meeting to discuss the proper use of certain terms in books. These things need policing, or they could get out of hand...

'Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren't you working on this?'

Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts. 'Indeed. The use of had had and that that has to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the ImaginoTransference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid.'

'Go on.'

'It's mostly an unlicensed usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty-three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim's Progress may also be a problem owing to its had had / that that ratio.'

'So what's the problem in Progress?'

'That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked but not if the number exceeds that that that usage.'

'Hmm,' said the Bellman. 'I thought had had had had TGC's approval for use in Dickens? What's the problem?'

'Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example,' explained Lady Cavendish. 'You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not.'

'So the problem with that other that that was that—?'

'That that other-other that that had had approval.'

'Okay,' said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, 'let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim’s Progress, which had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC's approval?'

There was a very long pause.

'Right,' said the Bellman with a sigh. 'That's it for the moment.'