Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

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I had received Lost in A Good Book, the sequel to The Eyre Affair (reviewed here) by Jasper Fforde, a few weeks ago and it took me a while to find the time to read it. I guess I had forgotten how much I had enjoyed The Eyre Affair, otherwise I would have made reading this book a priority. It was just such a fun and pleasurable read that if I had the third book on hand, I would have just kept on reading through the night.

At the end of The Eyre Affair, Thursday Next finally married Landen and defeated the evil Achron Hades. Now happily married and a reluctant celebrity, Thursday is back at work as a Spec-Op 27 literary detective. But the Goliath Corporation wants Hades back and they are willing to take some very harsh measures to force Thursday's compliance. Thursday's newlywed bliss is short lived when she returns home one day to discover that her husband has been eradicated and no one but her remembers that he ever existed. Those behind the eradication assure Thursday that the only way she will get her husband back is by retrieving Achron Hades from Poe's The Raven, where she had trapped him.

With no other options available, Thursday begins to investigate her own powers of book jumping. Along the way she becomes apprenticed to the wily, action loving Ms. Havisham, gets prosecuted in Kafka's The Trial and attempts to save the world from being turned into a mysterious pink, sticky confection.

In Lost in A Good Book, Fforde once again brings to life some of literature's favorite characters, giving them interesting personality quirks that I'm certain the original authors had never intended for them. But as Thursday runs from one crazy adventure to another, there remains a serious undertone to the story as she struggles to bring back her eradicated husband with whom she had just begun to discover the joys of love and marriage. Fforde skilfully manages to balance the humor of the story with the underlying poignancy of Thursday's loss, providing the book and its characters with an unexpected depth.

If you enjoyed The Eyre Affair, then I highly recommend that you follow Thursday Next to her continuing adventures in Lost in a Good Book. And if you have not yet tried a Jasper Fforde book, I suggest that you do so quickly as you are certainly missing out on some great reading fun.