Thursday Next General Thread

I'm not sure that's intentional on Fforde's part. That doesn't seem like his brand of humor at all.

The first four books in the series are good-to-great. The 5th... was obviously not planed for ahead of time (NO forshadowing for it), gets even more outrageous, and is not nearly as good IMO.

Dude, the fifth is great. The fourth, on the other hand...

...nah, it's good, too. Not as good as the rest of the series, though.

I think the second and third are the best. The rest are still pretty good, though.

I can't really say which one I like the best, though there are differences in their respective style, especially between the first one and the rest of the series. You can pretty much see that the independent book world wasn't intended to play such a big role in the series over all when you read it,

Seconded.

Yeah, but the BookWorld is my favorite part of the series, so I'm happy.

I really like the time time travelling element and the fact that the french are abusing it to kill off English hereos and that Thursdays dad was retgoned because of this.Now that time travel is gone I think the next book will suffer

Or it'll have to come up with something equally quirky to fill the void. Or it'll explain the ramifications of time travel's end...

Didn't Fforde wrote it out because he realized that in the long term, it causes way more trouble than it is worth?

Anyway why still have a lot of -former- SO left, with all the quirky stuff they used to deal with. Also, there is the serial killer, Aornis is on the lose again and there is still one other member of the Hades family left. Time Travel never was that much of a huge point for the series anyway. I doubt it will hurt the next book.

Agree'd. Besides, the next book is working with a much more interesting premise:

A fictional character adapting to the non-fictional real world, basically a perspective flip of the first two books.

That could very well be what we get, Eddie, from what I heard so far, the next Next will feature Thursday5, searching for the missing "real" Thursday. I guess that means she will be the narrator as well.

I think I liked the second and fourth books the best. They have a good mix of the personal and the crazy BookWorld stuff. When one or the other gets too overpowering the narrative suffers.

That's funny, I thought the fourth book took a steep dive after an excellent first chapter. And, usually, the more BookWorld there is, the more I like it.

I have a dilemma. I got the entire boxed set of Jasper Fforde's books for christmas. Should I read them now, or wait until I really need something amusing, awesome, and entertaining?

Hey, there's a box set?

I dunno, man, if you feel like reading it now, by all means, have at it.

I dunno, how long does it take you to get through a book? There should be a new one coming out in a couple of months, maybe you could try and get these finished before it comes out.

So, three years on I don't know if anyone's still following this thread, but I've just finished Sequels and it seemed a bit... abrupt? Almost like my copy was missing a final chapter.

I have a sense that there were a bunch of plot threads that didn't get tied up. For example:

• The cheese smuggling. This seemed like a tacked-on B plot the whole time, and then gets no resolution at all.
• Sherlock Holmes. Presumably they didn't fix the problem, and just hastily wrote him coming Back from the Dead... but if so it's not explained. Does it come up in a later book? I kind of expected Mycroft to have something to do with it, for obvious reasons, but that seems unlikely now.

edited 5th Oct '14 3:39:36 AM by johnnye

As I remember, the cheese-smuggling gets some mentions in the novels. As for Sherlock Holmes, I can't recall that there is a resolution.

I like the overall weirdness of the series. I just wish Fforde wouldn't age her up for each novel - that hints at a future without Thursday in it.

Well we know what happens to her She winds up in a gingham dress. As for Sherlock Holmes she seemed to be hinting at someone or something doing things to literary characters, IIRC there was something involving Temperance Brennan as well and there was a book entitled War of the Words that was rumored but never happened that I presume would have tied in.

I was thinking about Fforde's other works and I've noticed a strange pattern.

I'm trying to recall- does anyone lose a thumb in the Thursday Next series? So far I've noticed it in Nursery Crime, Shades of Grey, Early Riser and the Constant Rabbit. Trust Fforde to have a really weird take on Creator Thumbprint.