Jasper Fforde has done it again! LOST IN A GOOD BOOK is Thursday Next's second adventure in the world of books and it's just as much fun as her first, THE EYRE AFFAIR. In this adventure in an alternate version of our universe, Literotecs like Thursday Next wander through the plots of books, protecting them and their characters from nefarious people who try to change plots or do away with characters. While Thursday tries to rescue her "kidnapped" husband, she meets characters like Dickens's Miss Havisham and Marianne from SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. This novel's reader, Elizabeth Sastre, does just as fabulous a job as she did with the first novel. Each character has his or her own distinctive voice and accent, and Thursday especially is very appealing. Anyone who loves fiction will love this book! I can't wait for Thursday's next adventure THE WELL OF LOST PLOTS!

Thursday Next, a member of the Literary Detective Division of Special Operations in England, lives in looking-glass universe in which all the "givens" of our world are turned upside down. The Crimean War has just ended after 150 years, Thursday has a pet dodo, and Neanderthals have been reintroduced to the world. Her father, a former ChronoGuard, travels through time and can alter both the past and the present, and her uncle Mycroft has invented a Prose Portal, which allows people from the "real" world to travel inside books, an invention that the evil Goliath Corporation covets.

Thursday has just solved a difficult case, The Eyre Affair, in which she saves characters in Jane Eyre from murder and gives the book a better conclusion, and she has trapped the unscrupulous Jack Schitt of the Goliath Corporation inside Poe's "The Raven." In this sequel, the Goliath Corporation teaches Thursday a lesson, eradicating her husband, Landen Parke-Laine, by manipulating time so that he dies in an accident when he is a baby. Thursday, who has just found out that she is pregnant, now finds that she does not know who the baby's father is--because Landen never existed after the age of two. Blackmailed by Goliath, she must free Jack Schitt from "The Raven" if she ever wants to see Landen again. Miss Havisham from Dickens's Great Expectations, a long-time employee of Jurisfiction, takes her as an apprentice and tries to teach her how to get inside fiction without the Prose Portal and perhaps figure out a way to retrieve Landen.

Like The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book is the wackiest of pleasures, with off-the-wall literary characters performing outrageous deeds in which none of the "rules" of our universe apply. The plot and intrigue gain in complexity with the discovery of Cardenio, an unknown, and possibly phony, play by William Shakespeare, while pink slime threatens the existence of life on earth. The action is here episodic and the subplots do not really mesh, but each change of scene and subplot sets up opportunities for Fforde to show off his prodigious literary knowledge and wacky humor. The reader quickly becomes so caught up in the hullabaloo, that weaknesses, such as a looseness of plot and a lack of dramatic tension, can be excused. Commander Braxton Hicks, Akrid Snell, Chalk and Cheese, Dedman and Walken, Millon de Floss, Spike Stoker (the vampire containment expert), Alf Weddershaine and Sarah Nara, are as much a part of the fun as the outrageous puns, word play, and satire. The novel is high energy and high humor, and Fforde is well on his way to creating a heroine and a series which will gain him legions of fans. Mary Whipple

It's a world very like ours, only different: the Crimean War is still going on the 1980s, there are dodos and mammoths, time can be altered and changing a manuscript changes all copies of the book. The surreal sequel to Jasper Fforde's fantastic "Eyre Affair" serves up more of the same, only more polished this time.

The newly-wed Thursday Next is drowning in the publicity after her showdown with Acheron Hades and the fateful changing of "Jane Eyre"'s finale. Her consolations are her new husband Landen, her dodo Pickwick, and the fact that she's going to be a mum (yes, you read that correctly). But bizarre things start to happen ("Something's going to happen, and I'm part of it"), including telepathic footnotes from her fictional defense attorney.

When Thursday ventures onto a Skyrail, time twists after a Neanderthal pilot steers it in an effort to go to Goliath Corp. and her dad appears long enough to warn her about the impending potential destruction of the world (everything is going to turn into goo --literally). Worse, when Thursday returns home, she finds that Landen isn't there. Even worse, he's not there because of a fatal drowning incident at the age of two. And if she wants to return things to how they should be, she'll have to
encounter the Cheshire Cat (or more correctly, the "Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat"), venture into her memories, and be apprenticed to Miss Havisham...

Fforde gives even more dimension to his alternate universe (including a mention of our own), showing that he still has plenty of turf left to cover. First there were dodos, and now there is also a dreamy mammoth and a Tasmanian tiger. Fforde also gives us a race of reanimated Neanderthals, who are treated as more intelligent animals, and gives us an intriguing, delicately-done look at human nature. But it's also extremely funny, including the discovery of a lost Shakespearean play, Molecular Unstable Brie, the condition of Xplkqulkiccasia, the renamed Cheshire Cat, and Thursday's stint on a talk show where nobody lets her talk about the work that made her famous.

Thursday is still hard-boiled and tough, but she gets a little more vulnerable now that she's married, so some readers might find her edge a bit gone. Landen is nice enough, although he's in relatively little of the book; Akrid Snell (Acrid Smell?) of an mystery series is entertaining as the footnote-speaking attorney who won't tell Thursday why she's on trial. There are also appearances (some brief, some not) by Acheron Hades (well, sort of), Uncle Myles, Spike, Pickwick the Dodo, and others.

Fforde's writing has become a little more polished since "Eyre Affair," and the book flows a little more smoothly (especially when it needs to be weird or surreal). The dialogue is still funny and snappy, full of literary in-jokes and weird twists, but it grows more serious about halfway through.

"Lost In A Good Book" is amusing and literate, like "Eyre Affair." And Fforde's literate little world has plenty of promise for future books.

Lost in a Good Book is the next adventure in the saga of Thursday Next, intrepid literary detective. Fforde takes the reader on another exploration of great literature, but makes it accessible even to the readers who haven't really read any of them. This book is an excellent addition to the mythos. It's a fast-paced romp that will leave you smiling and intrigued at the same time.

Fforde takes the world that he created in The Eyre Affair and adds even more to it. In fact, he creates an entire fictional world beneath the "reality" that Thursday lives in. Characters from literature can travel to the real world, or to other books. An entire infrastructure of literary characters is charged with defending literature against evil-doers. The Jurisfiction organization, centered in the Great Library where every book (even books that only potentially existed) is housed, fights against everything from vicious creatures that eat vocabulary to Bowdlerisers, who travel through fiction trying to eliminate obscenity and profanity from it. In her travels, Thursday becomes the apprentice to Miss Havisham, from Great Expectations, a master book-jumper. All of this is in an attempt to learn how to get into "The Raven" and save her husband. Once again, I have to credit Fforde's imagination. There are so many cool concepts in this book that I won't give you any more. It would spoil some of the fun.

Also like the first book, this is a triumph of prose and imagery over character, as most of the characters don't have a lot of depth to them. They are mostly part of the joke, or part of the scenery. Thursday is one exception to this, and Miss Havisham is the other. Havisham is a wonderful character, taking what Dickens created and adding to it. It's very interesting to see Havisham interacting with Pip and Estella as part of the book, and then when the scenes switches to a new chapter and away from her, she becomes even more animated. These characters know that they are characters in a book, they speak their lines and do their bit, and then they go off to live their own life. Every chapter adds more and more to Fforde's world.

One way in which this is different from the first book, however, is that Fforde doesn't concentrate as much in the alternate reality that Thursday lives in. We get an update on how things are going (the Crimean War peace talks, for one thing), but for the most part, everything takes place either in the books themselves, or in the real world but with lots of literary characters bumbling about. For example, Havisham is a hoot when she gets behind the wheel of a car. If you can imagine an 18th century spinster with a lead foot, you will get the picture. It's hilarious to see, and to read about. I constantly found myself marveling at what Fforde was producing, and didn't notice that the characters were kind of plot devices.

However, once again, the writing is wonderful. Fforde has a very smooth style that almost feels literary. It's almost the perfect mix between classic literature and today's fiction. Part of that is helped by the other fictional characters being around (most of them being from classical literature anyway), but a lot of it is the prose itself. The plot is interesting in itself and there are some godawful puns (those are the best kind). Some of the events in the novel seem to come out of left field, but everything ultimately has a good reason for happening, which is nice. A couple of times I groaned at how something was resolved, thinking it looked too much like writer's fiat, but then something else happened that explained exactly why that resolution occurred. Considering how twisty the book can get at times, that's no mean feat.

I greatly enjoyed this novel, though not quite as much as the first. I'm not sure why that is, because it seems just as good as the first one. Maybe I would have liked a little more real-world action. In the first book, I reveled in the scenes like the Rocky Horror Picture Show-style rendition of Richard III. Those sorts of details were missing in this one (though the beginning, when Thursday goes on the talk show, is a complete scream). There were a couple of seemingly useless items. There's no reason that I can see for the mammoths to be around, other than as interesting scenery. In a book that's full of imagery, that's not usually a bad thing, but this time it seemed like they would have a purpose, and then they didn't.

Fforde has shown, yet again, that he is a master at this sort of thing. He uses wonderful language, interesting images, and a great plot. Don't pick up this book for the wonderful characters, though. Fforde concentrates more on making the characters do interesting things than in actually making them interesting themselves. Except for Thursday, of course. She is the ultimate, and I love her to death. You also don't have to be afraid of not having read classic fiction and thus not being able to understand the book. While I'm sure it would be enhanced if you are familiar with it, it's not a necessity to get most of the jokes. All in all, I really felt like I was Lost in a Good Book.