Monday, May 11, 2009

The Well of Lost Plots By Jasper Fforde

A delightful romp through the world of books, words, letters and characters from fiction and non fiction. The heroine is Literary Detective of Special Ops, Jurisfiction, Thursday Next who is going to try to get a well deserved rest by entering the Book World as part of the Character Exchange Program. She has chosen a character from an unpublished book of dubious quality where she thinks that she will have little to do. This is her first entry into the Book World where she will be viewed as an "outlander" a real person, by the book characters. Thursday’s mentor is Miss Havisham from "Great Expectations".
To understand the concept of the Well of Lost Plots, the reader must learn about the "Great Library"; all published fiction is stored on 26 floors, one floor for each letter of the alphabet. Millions of books are stored on endless shelves and each book is alive. Beneath the Great Library are another 26 floors of dingy sub basements where books are constructed, edited and polished for a place in the library above if they make it that far. There is a "Text Sea" which is full of letters, verbs, nouns, phrases and everything that makes up a book. Grammasites run rampant and plot devices are bought and sold on a black market and bad (lousy) books are scrapped for salvage. There is a murderer threatening to throw Thursday’s novel, her temporary home, into the Text Sea and real or not, she could be destroyed. Very fast paced and original humor.
This book is one of a series of Thursday Next novels by this very creative author; so much fun to read! I have ordered his latest effort from Amazon

No comments: