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fandomhigh_ooc2007-01-22 12:35 pm
no-toast-thanks.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh_ooc2007-01-22 12:35 pm
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Spotlight on Fandoms: Thursday Next
So it's no Gaiman, but the crack is still strong with Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series.
The Books
There are 4 books (currently) in the Thursday Next series. They are The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten. A fifth book is due to be released in July 2007 called First Among Sequels and eeeee I'm going to be in England for the release.
The Eyre Affair - Acheron Hades steals the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, uses a nifty device called a Prose Portal to go into the book and kidnaps Jane Eyre. He threatens to kill her unless a ransom is paid. Thursday Next has to track him down and stop him, while being hounded by the annoying bureaucrats from Goliath and dealing with her love life.
I won't get into the details of the other books because they'll be all spoilery, but in short Thursday has to deal with suspicious politicians, time travel, someone who wants to literally mess around in her brain, learn how to be a Jurisfiction agent, stop evil from taking over the BookWorld, deal with fictional characters such as the Cheshire Cat and Hamlet, find a Minotaur on the run and save the entire universe from turning into Dream Topping pudding.
Oh, and manage her family and try to keep her job. Same ol', same ol'.
The Author
Jasper Fforde is a guy from England. You can read all about him here: www.jasperfforde.com. He's on the good crack. If he was an RPer, he'd be a Fandom High RPer.
The Real World
The big thing about Thursday Next is that the series is set in an alternate timeline. Namely, an alternate 1985 in England. There is no United Kingdom (just the Republic of England and the Socialist Republic of Wales - no bloody clue what Scotland and Ireland are doing). England is still at war with Imperial Russia over the Crimean penninsula (a war that ended in the 1800s in our timeline). The Germans successfully invaded and occupied England during WWII, home cloning is a popular hobby and has resulted in the resurrection of mammoths, thylacines, Neanderthals and dodos and literature is very serious business.
While movies, television and music exists, literature is the main form of popular culture in the Nextian universe. There are Christopher Marlowe fangirls (and fanboys), Richard III is put on every week as an audience participation play (ala Rocky Horror Picture Show), people change their name to Milton and Browning, Jane Austen is huge, Dickens is worthy of riots and forgery of manuscripts and dealing in black market books is a big industry.
Then there's SpecOps, but I'll get to them in a second.
And that's just the real world.
The BookWorld
One of the other features of the Nextian universe is that some people can read themselves into books. There's a whole BookWorld inside books where fictional characters play their parts as if they were actors, bad guys (PageRunners) try to stir up trouble and the good guys, Jurisfiction, maintain law and order.
And the fictional characters do it all themselves, because apparently the authors don't actually write books. They just think they do.
More on this in a sec, but suffice to say, there's the real world, then there's the Great Library where every single book that has ever been written and ever will be written is kept, and then there's the world inside the books themselves. Because one can never have too many places to screw around with apparently!
The Mostly Good Guys
Thursday E. Next - SpecOps agent, Jurisfiction agent, former military and police, eventual wife, eventual mother, all around action hero who doesn't really realise that she's doing anything out of the ordinary.
SpecOps - Special Operations Network. These guys police everything that's too specialised for the regular police force. They range from SO-1 (internal affairs) to SO-3 (Weird Shit) to SO-12 (ChronoGuard/time police), SO-17 (Vampire & Werewolf Disposal Unit) all the way down to SO-27 (Literary Detectives) and beyond.
Colonel Next - Thursday's dad, rogue ChronoGuard agent who's working on fixing things that French revisionists did to the timestream.
Wednesday Next - Thursday's mum, former SO-3 agent. Very bad cook.
Joffy Next - Thursday's brother who is a priest for the Global Standard Deity church.
Landen Parke-Laine - frell it, you're going to be spoiled. Landen is Thursday's ex-lover turned husband who is eradicated from existence to blackmail Thursday, providing her with the drive to get through Book 2, 3 and most of 4.
Friday Next (Parke-Laine) - Thursday's (almost) 3 year old son. I won't get into matters of paternity, but while Friday's surname has never been mentioned as being Next or Parke-Laine I've decided to go with Parke-Laine for now. He was born and raised in the BookWorld, so he only speaks Lorem Ipsum. He *can* speak clear English, but chooses not to for some reason.
Bowden Cable - Thursday's straightlaced partner in SpecOps.
Victor Analogy - Thursday's SpecOps-27 boss.
Spike Stoker - the sole operative of Swindon's SpecOps-17 (Vampire & Werewolf Disposal Unit). Very laid back for his line of work.
Braxton Hicks - head of SpecOps Swindon.
The Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat (aka The Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire) - the librarian of the Great Library. Changed his name from the Cheshire Cat because the county line between Cheshire and the Unitary Authority of Warrington was moved. He's quite mad.
Miss Havisham - the character from Great Expectations. Takes Thursday as her apprentice when Thursday first joins Jurisfiction.
Commander Trafford Bradshaw - old skool Jurisfiction booksplorer from a very old, obscure adventuring series. Married a gorilla.
The Bad Guys
Goliath - a giant multinational corporation who run pretty much everything (from cots to coffins). They even bought Antarctica to try to make penguin meat the new big thing, but it tastes awful. Their two main operatives are Jack Schitt and Brik Schitt-Hawse. They have their hands in everything and make Thursday's life hell.
Acheron Hades - Thursday's arch-nemesis. He has special, unexplained powers, is a complete sociopath and loves to kill for fun. Or, you know, because it's a day that ends in Y.
Aornis Hades - Acheron's bitch of a sister. Real mind-frakker. Hates Thursday and likes to screw around with her. Um, not dirty.
Yorrick Kaine - a politician who tried to use the discovered (formerly lost) Shakespearean manuscript of Cardenio to gain power. He's just a bastard.
The Minotaur - killed several Jurisfiction agents and probably people in the real world too. He's vicious, conniving and deadly. Shoot on sight. No, really. He's currently out to get Thursday.
There are, of course, a bunch of other bad guys, but I don't want to spoil too many surprises.
In Short
This series is full of crack, literary allusions and puns on everything imaginable. Thursday is a normal person in a world that's completely cracky and weird. The humour is very dry and witty. The story is told from Thursday's first-person perspective looking back at her life, and it's a very easy read.
Book 1 is all about Thursday's life in the real world and changing Jane Eyre. Book 2 is learning about Jurisfiction and the BookWorld and dealing with Shakespeare nuts. Book 3 is even more about the BookWorld and there's adventure galore. Book 4 is back in the real world, but deals with elements from both ends and it guest stars none other than Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Yes, that Hamlet. His speech in the coffee shop about being undecided over what to order is to die for.
There's drama, intrigue, heroes, villains, crazy people, death, violence, complete and utter WTFery and it's by far my favourite series.
The series is available pretty much everywhere.
Books at Amazon for $11.20 each:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
The Audiobook (free! Donated by the lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
time_agent):
The Eyre Affair - Part 1
The Eyre Affair - Part 2
The Eyre Affair - Part 3
That's the whole book.
If you have any questions about the series, about Thursday (canon or Fandom) or anything else, please don't hesitate to ask!
The Books
There are 4 books (currently) in the Thursday Next series. They are The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten. A fifth book is due to be released in July 2007 called First Among Sequels and eeeee I'm going to be in England for the release.
The Eyre Affair - Acheron Hades steals the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, uses a nifty device called a Prose Portal to go into the book and kidnaps Jane Eyre. He threatens to kill her unless a ransom is paid. Thursday Next has to track him down and stop him, while being hounded by the annoying bureaucrats from Goliath and dealing with her love life.
I won't get into the details of the other books because they'll be all spoilery, but in short Thursday has to deal with suspicious politicians, time travel, someone who wants to literally mess around in her brain, learn how to be a Jurisfiction agent, stop evil from taking over the BookWorld, deal with fictional characters such as the Cheshire Cat and Hamlet, find a Minotaur on the run and save the entire universe from turning into Dream Topping pudding.
Oh, and manage her family and try to keep her job. Same ol', same ol'.
The Author
Jasper Fforde is a guy from England. You can read all about him here: www.jasperfforde.com. He's on the good crack. If he was an RPer, he'd be a Fandom High RPer.
The Real World
The big thing about Thursday Next is that the series is set in an alternate timeline. Namely, an alternate 1985 in England. There is no United Kingdom (just the Republic of England and the Socialist Republic of Wales - no bloody clue what Scotland and Ireland are doing). England is still at war with Imperial Russia over the Crimean penninsula (a war that ended in the 1800s in our timeline). The Germans successfully invaded and occupied England during WWII, home cloning is a popular hobby and has resulted in the resurrection of mammoths, thylacines, Neanderthals and dodos and literature is very serious business.
While movies, television and music exists, literature is the main form of popular culture in the Nextian universe. There are Christopher Marlowe fangirls (and fanboys), Richard III is put on every week as an audience participation play (ala Rocky Horror Picture Show), people change their name to Milton and Browning, Jane Austen is huge, Dickens is worthy of riots and forgery of manuscripts and dealing in black market books is a big industry.
Then there's SpecOps, but I'll get to them in a second.
And that's just the real world.
The BookWorld
One of the other features of the Nextian universe is that some people can read themselves into books. There's a whole BookWorld inside books where fictional characters play their parts as if they were actors, bad guys (PageRunners) try to stir up trouble and the good guys, Jurisfiction, maintain law and order.
And the fictional characters do it all themselves, because apparently the authors don't actually write books. They just think they do.
More on this in a sec, but suffice to say, there's the real world, then there's the Great Library where every single book that has ever been written and ever will be written is kept, and then there's the world inside the books themselves. Because one can never have too many places to screw around with apparently!
The Mostly Good Guys
Thursday E. Next - SpecOps agent, Jurisfiction agent, former military and police, eventual wife, eventual mother, all around action hero who doesn't really realise that she's doing anything out of the ordinary.
SpecOps - Special Operations Network. These guys police everything that's too specialised for the regular police force. They range from SO-1 (internal affairs) to SO-3 (Weird Shit) to SO-12 (ChronoGuard/time police), SO-17 (Vampire & Werewolf Disposal Unit) all the way down to SO-27 (Literary Detectives) and beyond.
Colonel Next - Thursday's dad, rogue ChronoGuard agent who's working on fixing things that French revisionists did to the timestream.
Wednesday Next - Thursday's mum, former SO-3 agent. Very bad cook.
Joffy Next - Thursday's brother who is a priest for the Global Standard Deity church.
Landen Parke-Laine - frell it, you're going to be spoiled. Landen is Thursday's ex-lover turned husband who is eradicated from existence to blackmail Thursday, providing her with the drive to get through Book 2, 3 and most of 4.
Friday Next (Parke-Laine) - Thursday's (almost) 3 year old son. I won't get into matters of paternity, but while Friday's surname has never been mentioned as being Next or Parke-Laine I've decided to go with Parke-Laine for now. He was born and raised in the BookWorld, so he only speaks Lorem Ipsum. He *can* speak clear English, but chooses not to for some reason.
Bowden Cable - Thursday's straightlaced partner in SpecOps.
Victor Analogy - Thursday's SpecOps-27 boss.
Spike Stoker - the sole operative of Swindon's SpecOps-17 (Vampire & Werewolf Disposal Unit). Very laid back for his line of work.
Braxton Hicks - head of SpecOps Swindon.
The Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat (aka The Cat Formerly Known as Cheshire) - the librarian of the Great Library. Changed his name from the Cheshire Cat because the county line between Cheshire and the Unitary Authority of Warrington was moved. He's quite mad.
Miss Havisham - the character from Great Expectations. Takes Thursday as her apprentice when Thursday first joins Jurisfiction.
Commander Trafford Bradshaw - old skool Jurisfiction booksplorer from a very old, obscure adventuring series. Married a gorilla.
The Bad Guys
Goliath - a giant multinational corporation who run pretty much everything (from cots to coffins). They even bought Antarctica to try to make penguin meat the new big thing, but it tastes awful. Their two main operatives are Jack Schitt and Brik Schitt-Hawse. They have their hands in everything and make Thursday's life hell.
Acheron Hades - Thursday's arch-nemesis. He has special, unexplained powers, is a complete sociopath and loves to kill for fun. Or, you know, because it's a day that ends in Y.
Aornis Hades - Acheron's bitch of a sister. Real mind-frakker. Hates Thursday and likes to screw around with her. Um, not dirty.
Yorrick Kaine - a politician who tried to use the discovered (formerly lost) Shakespearean manuscript of Cardenio to gain power. He's just a bastard.
The Minotaur - killed several Jurisfiction agents and probably people in the real world too. He's vicious, conniving and deadly. Shoot on sight. No, really. He's currently out to get Thursday.
There are, of course, a bunch of other bad guys, but I don't want to spoil too many surprises.
In Short
This series is full of crack, literary allusions and puns on everything imaginable. Thursday is a normal person in a world that's completely cracky and weird. The humour is very dry and witty. The story is told from Thursday's first-person perspective looking back at her life, and it's a very easy read.
Book 1 is all about Thursday's life in the real world and changing Jane Eyre. Book 2 is learning about Jurisfiction and the BookWorld and dealing with Shakespeare nuts. Book 3 is even more about the BookWorld and there's adventure galore. Book 4 is back in the real world, but deals with elements from both ends and it guest stars none other than Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Yes, that Hamlet. His speech in the coffee shop about being undecided over what to order is to die for.
There's drama, intrigue, heroes, villains, crazy people, death, violence, complete and utter WTFery and it's by far my favourite series.
The series is available pretty much everywhere.
Books at Amazon for $11.20 each:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
The Audiobook (free! Donated by the lovely
time_agent):The Eyre Affair - Part 1
The Eyre Affair - Part 2
The Eyre Affair - Part 3
That's the whole book.
If you have any questions about the series, about Thursday (canon or Fandom) or anything else, please don't hesitate to ask!
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That is quite possibly the best sales line EVER, as far as I'm concerned. *goes to buy, OMG*
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He also has another series, the Nursery Crime series (The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear) where DI Jack Spratt investigates things like why Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall. It's not as good as the TN series, but also worth grabbing if you see it around cheap.
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Or the library has them, too.
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Why is a raven like a writing desk? :)
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This really do sound amazing, I'll see if we have it in our local bookstores.