words in scarlet ink

Thursday Next is the protagonist of a book series I accidentally stumbled on 2019. I believe I bought One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde at an airport when I forgot my own book, not realizing it was part of a series. I enjoyed it in spite of being somewhat confused by it (I definitely remember reading it and in the middle having a moment of clarity where the entire story made sense).

Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series currently stand as such:

Series 1:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten

Series 2 (so far):
First Among Sequels
One of Our Thursdays is Missing
The Woman Who Died A Lot

In 2019, I read/listened to four Thursday Next novels. The second novel of the second series, and the first three novels of the first series. The only reason I didn’t continue is that I couldn’t find the later books as audiobooks, although as I was writing this I went back to check and was able to borrow Something Rotten as an audiobook right away (and did so, will be listening to it after my current book).

I am sort of at a loss as where to begin “reviewing” the Thursday Next series, as the universe created around them is one of the most creative and complex I’ve read outside of high fantasy. The Thursday Next wikipedia page describes the stories as “comic fantasy, alternate history mystery novels” and that’s about as good a genre breakdown as you’re going to get.

Thursday herself is an engaging character, in her mid thirties and quite bright, working in the Literary Detective section. Literature is much more popular in Thursday’s world than ours, and much of the plot is centered around classic literature.

Fforde’s writing is full of wordplay – alliteration and puns abound – and he plays with traditional genres. There’s metafiction, fantasy, and parody. There are many, many literary references that made me grin. I quite enjoyed the novels and highly recommend them to all nerds who like literature and wordplay. I am pleasantly surprised to have Something Rotten on my audiobook shelf and look forward to trying to find the other books in the series.

Absolutely recommend.