Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels

First Among Sequels

Jasper Fforde

Viking, Jul 2007, $24.95

ISBN: 9780670038718

Acme Carpets undercover Special Operations investigator Thursday Next's son Friday is a sixteen year old pain in the butt, who prefers sleeping in rather than following a plot. His literary agent mom fails to persuade her sequel that ChronoGuard needs him to prevent the Stupidity Surplus reaching danger zones. After being rejected by her offspring, Next has to switch chapters as a lethal plot has surfaced. Apparently Moriarty murdered Sherlock Holmes at the Rheinback Falls; his sequels died with him. Soon afterward, Miss Marple dies in a car crash; her series dies with her too.

When Thursday receives a death threat, she realizes that a serial killer is killing sleuths and other characters in Bookworld. Additionally, as she struggles with preventing more protagonists from having their story lines ended prematurely, the Goliath Corporation is pushing heavily to deregulate book travel, claiming it is a right of all characters to visit other tales. Thursday knows this crisis means stepping outside genre guidelines beyond the temporal acceptance even as another twist filled with realistic red herring occurs as the classics are being converted into reality books for the masses. Finally the Cheese Enforcement Agency arrests Next for smuggling banned cheesy products into Bookworld. This is just another day for the savior of literature.

As always the fate of classic and cheesy literature is at stake as Thursday once again tries to correct all that is wrong in literature starting with her teenage slacker. The satire rips into sequels, the inane customs laws, adults telling teens grow up, and deregulation with no consequences based on the customer (reader) is always wrong. Fans will enjoy lampooning the genres and much more as Thursday saves the world one pun at a time.

Harriet Klausner