Outside A Dog

Last book for February, hooray! The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde is the third in the series of novels about Thursday Next, a literary detective in an alternate version of 1985. After battling the evil Goliath Corporation in her version of England, she learns that she has a special ability to enter books themselves, and finds herself in — ta da — BookWorld.

Being that Goliath has eradicated her husband, Landon — Thursday and her grandmother are the only two people who remember that he ever existed — and also being that she is pregnant, she decides to temporarily hide out in BookWorld — more specifically, in the Well of Lost Plots, where all unwritten books hang out until they are written and published. Thursday becomes an apprentice of Jurisfiction, the BookWorld’s policing unit, and is under the supervision of Great Expections’s Miss Havisham as they try to uncover who is behind the murders of other Jurisfiction members. Thursday also takes it upon herself to train a couple of Generics — backup book characters who can be trained to fill just about any role — as well as to save the book in which she is seeking refuge before it is demolished. As this while trying to hang on to the memories of her husband and learning enough to become a full-fledged Jurisfiction agent.

While I certainly enjoyed the usual bit of wordplay and all of the literary references (both the obvious and the not-so-obvious ones, which I tend to enjoy a little more), I don’t think this third book quite stands up to the first two. Everything felt a little jumbly, and to be quite honest, I had a heck of a time keeping some of the lesser characters completely straight. Thursday’s struggles with Aornis over the memories of Landon feel like they were an afterthought, and that subplot got wrapped up a bit too easily. There are a couple of inconsistencies that I can’t address without giving too much away, but those are quite possibly the result of being slightly too picky. Even with all the minor grumbles I have about The Well of Lost Plots, I still think it’s a great read and will definitely be continuing on with the series.