For years I had thought that the wonderful, innovative, awe-inspiring Thursday Next series ended with Something Rotten, with the action culminating with the thrilling croquet match that saved the world as they know it.
You can not imagine how incredibly ecstatic I was to find out about First Among Sequels. My husband works in a book store and I made him get it for me the day he first mentioned it to me. So as you can see, my expectations were quite high when it came to actually reading the book.
Thursday is still the same, multi-layered character I've loved from the beginning, and the literary references, bizarre happenings and distorted tableaus of everyday life in the world of a mother, wife, cheese-smuggler and jurisfiction agent came fast and furious.
The only problem I had was that parts of the plot seemed a little stilted. It might even be that when I read the first one I found BookWorld, jurisfiction and the like all so bewildering that I was swept along so fast I missed clues, but this time I noticed all the foreshadowing and was able to quiet often guess what was going down. But this was not a real problem and it was still the same familiar world I'd missed.
If you haven't read this series, you're doing yourself a disfavour - go find The Jane Eyre Affair immediately. It's unashamedly snobbish in its literary references, and the more you've read the funnier the series is, but the plots are excellent even without that layer. An excellent read.
Word count - 837
I've heard about this series---thanks for the recommedation!
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