I’m normally a very avid Jasper Fforde fan, but I’m getting the impression that he needs to slow down. He has been producing novels at an alarming speed, and the effect seems a bit disjointed.
In Thursday Next, First Among Sequels, a large part of the book reminds me of my literary criticism class, in which large conversations intent on explaining the unexplainable bordered on the downright silly. It’s as if people have asked Fforde how his “Bookworld” could possibly exist, and in response, he created whole chapters of real Thursday Next trying to explain the science of books to her cadets (fictional versions of herself). What? Putting Reader Response Theory into scientific, and even mechanical terms just didn’t quite fly, in my opinion. While Fforde prefers to push the borders of rational thought on a regular basis, something fell short on this attempt. It just wasn’t as interesting as his earlier attempts at the same.
L. Frank Baum used to write sequels to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by using plot suggestions from dedicated fans who wrote in. In some parts of this most recent book, it seems that Fforde did the same. It was as though he had a number of great ideas about the characters he’s created, but they came together almost disjointedly, or not at all (the book ends on a cliffhanger). Diehard Ffordians will still enjoy the book, but in my opinion, it could have used a few more revisions before publication.
