Something Rotten

After serving two years as the head of Jurisfiction, Thursday Next feels ready to return to reality and try to have her husband reinstantiated by the treacherous Goliath Corporation. She comes back to Swindon to discover that Britain's most sinister multinational corporate behemoth is in cahoots with fictional fascist politician Yorrick Kaine, and that their bid to seize power while switching to a faith-based business model could have dire implications for the world.

On top of all that, she's got a two year old who only speaks Lorem Ipsum and a certain literary Dane to safeguard though a self-examinatory sabbatical.

The fourth book in the first Thursday Next trilogy was in many ways Jasper fforde's first foray into the dazzling light of superstar publishing. It was also something of a test, with many readers feeling that the madly conceptual The Well of Lost Plots had been a step down from Lost in a Good Book. The result is, for my money, pretty damn good, and certainly holds up to a second reading. It is particularly interesting (if you're me) to look out the changes made since book one. (For example, various chapter headings have referred to the assassination and later attempted assassination of President-for-Life George Formby, who here dies of natural causes.)

Something Rotten brings the story to a fairly natural close, sufficiently so that I was surprised to see Thursday reappear a few years later in First Among Sequels. In many ways it is the conclusion of a trilogy beginning with Lost in a Good Book than a narrative sequel to The Eyre Affair, which comes across as a slightly tentative proof of concept in retrospect, and that is a good trilogy. Once I buy the remaining books on Kindle, I'll give my thoughts on the next Next trilogy (including a first reading of The Woman Who Died A Lot, and perhaps more importantly a second reading of One of Our Thursdays is Missing.)