★★★★☆ In which Landen is not entirely forgotten

The Well of Lost Plots

Jasper Fforde

The third book of Jasper Fforde's the Thursday Next series is called The Well of Lost Plots, so it behooves us to clarify what that is. Book two, Lost in a Good Book, spent much of its time on the exposition of an infrastructure for moving around within and between books. Certain gifted people -- our Thursday is one -- can, by reading the text of a book, transport themselves into the book, where they can interact with the characters, take action to change the plot (although this is frowned upon), or just hang out. There is, in fact, a whole large organization to facilitate this sort of thing. The law enforcement authority is called Jurisfiction, and they work in a structure called The Library. The English Library has 26 floors above ground housing all published books (alphabetized by author). In addition, it has 26 below-ground floors housing books that have not yet been published. This below-ground library, where all books come from, is called The Well of Lost Plots.

We're used to Thursday being a real-world SO-27 literary detective. In The Well of Lost Plots she has taken maternity leave because she is pregnant with Landen Parke-Laine's child, which is quite a trick, since Landen died in a accident at the age of two. During her leave she stays in an unpublished book called Caversham Heights, where she plays the part of one of the characters. Caversham Heights being unpublished, is housed in The Well of Lost Plots. Thursday joins Jurisfiction in The Well of Lost Plots.

Landen is not forgotten. Well, he *IS* forgotten, intermittently. Landen, if you remember, was eradicated in Lost in a Good Book. That is, the Goliath corporation altered history in such a way as to cause him to have died at the age of two. However, they did this while preserving Thursday's memory of him and also her pregnancy with (Thursday devoutly hopes) Landen's baby. Thursday, who is a champion at pissing people off, has another enemy in addition to Goliath - -the mnemonomorph Aornis Hades. Aornis wants revenge for Thursday's killing of her big brother Acheron Hades in The Eyre Affair. Aornis, being a memory-changer, is trying to erase Thursday's memory of Landen.

Are you confused yet? Good! That shows you sort-of understand. The Well of Lost Plots has two plots. The main plot concerns Thursday's activities in the Library as a Jurisfiction agent. You will not be surprised to learn that there's dirty work afoot. The subplot concerns Thursday's efforts to resist Aornis subversion of her memory.

In summary, The Well of Lost Plots is the sort of literary madness you've come to expect from a Thursday Next book. It bristles with allusions and clever and funny plot devices. If you like what Thursday Next is all about, you will enjoy this one.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★★☆ Granny Weatherwax gets headologized

Witches Abroad Terry Pratchett Witches Abroad is the twelfth novel in Terry Pratchett 's Discworld series, and the third in the Witches subseries, after Equal Rites and Wyrd Sisters , which introduced Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and the unfortunate Magrat Garlick. They are the central figures of Witches Abroad , but the first three witches we meet are not Magrat, Granny, and Nanny. One of these first three is Desiderata Hollow, who is about to die. but has unfinished business left. She needs to get Magrat, Granny, and Nanny to take care of it, so she uses headology. Got to be all three. And that ain’t easy, with people like them. Got to use headology. Got to make ’em send ’emselves. Tell Esme Weatherwax she’s got to go somewhere and she won’t go out of contrariness, so tell her she’s not to go and she’ll run there over broken glass. "There" is the distant city of Genua, where the third of the first three witches has cast hers...

★★☆☆☆ A story about a stupid liar who tells a stupid lie

The Lie T.C. Boyle ** spoiler alert ** Two days ago I started a local community college course called "Writing Short Stories". As an example the first week's material had a video of author T. Coraghessan Boyle reading his story The Lie aloud. The story in summary is that the protagonist (certainly not a hero), who is a lazy guy, doesn't want to go to work one morning, so he calls his boss and tells him a really stupid lie. The next day he skips work again and he doubles down on the lie. Eventually he gets caught by his wife. There are a lot of stories of stupid people acting stupid. There are so many that I have to assume some people like these stories. I am not one of them. The Lie on Amazon Goodreads review

★★★☆☆ A blacker shade of Noir

White Butterfly Walter Mosley White Butterfly is the third novel in Walter Mosley 's classic Easy Rawlins mystery series. While the first two, Devil in a Blue Dress and A Red Death are brilliant expositions of life for a black man in 1950s Los Angeles, they are, to be completely frank, not great story-telling. (It should go without saying that I'm expressing personal opinions, and that yours may differ. It should go without saying, but it doesn't always, so there, I just said it.) There's just too much going on, too many characters. As mysteries, they failed for me, because I could barely follow the story. White Butterfly is better. The story was engaging, comparatively straightforward, and there was even a good plot twist near the end that took me by surprise. I've been reading fiction for 65 years, so a plot twist that takes me by surprise is an unusual achievement. As detective fiction, Easy Rawlins ...

★★★★☆ An elegant family

Spy x Family, Vol 1 Tatsuya Endo (Story & Art), Casey Loe (Translator), Rina Mapa (Touch-Up Art & Lettering), Jimmy Presler (Design) In my quest to learn to read Japanese, I have a routine of reading through a Japanese work at the rate of five new words every two days. I have almost finished reading The Little Prince (Japanese Edition) and feel I should move on to books originally written in Japanese. Tatsuya Endo 's Spy x Family manga series seemed like it would be fun, so I'm getting ready to start that. I have laid hands on the first three volumes in Japanese (not a trivial problem for one living in Canada). Because I don't want to sacrifice my enjoyment to my poor Japanese comprehension, I bought the English translation of Vol. 1 and read it. Here's the premise. 黄昏 (translated "Twilight") is a an accomplished spy for the small country Westalis, a master of disguise. His mission is to infiltrate the elite Eden Academy in order to spy ...

★★★★☆ What are these people?

Red Side Story Jasper Fforde When I reviewed Shades of Grey , the first novel in Jasper Fforde 's Shades of Grey series, I asked Although I referred to Eddie as a young man, it is not clear to me what the people of the Collective are. I think they are more-or-less human. ... However, in some ways they behave like automata. These are puzzles that I hope Jasper Fforde will clear up in subsequent novels in the Shades of Grey series. Now I'm patting myself on the back, because that is indeed what Red Side Story is about. Or so say I. You might think it is about other things -- a love story, a fight to survive, a battle for justice, a cycle race -- and you would not be wrong. Red Side Story contains multitudes. Shades of Grey ended in a flurry of revelations about the Collective. Eddie, Jane and Courtland Gamboge visited the abandoned town of High Saffron, where Jane revealed that all the people supposedly sent to Reboot were in fact sen...

★★★★☆ Myrtle's cold case

Cold-Blooded Myrtle Elizabeth C. Bunce The title of the third Mrytle HardCastle mystery is, as usual, a pun exploiting the assonance of Myrtle and murder. (This HAS to be the reason Elizabeth C. Bunce chose the name Myrtle, right?) This one is odd, though, because "cold-blooded" is the one thing that our Myrtle is NOT! Our Myrtle is keen as a hound on a scent. She's a brilliant, nosy kid who can't be persuaded, ever, to mind her own business. She is not put off by blood and poison and viscera, which sounds like she might be cold-blooded, except that she's not -- she's positively enthusiastic about murder, even ghoulish. And we love it! Or at least, I do. For Cold-Blooded Myrtle , we don't take any trips or go anywhere exotic. The action takes place entirely in Myrtle's home town of Swinburne and the neighboring Schofield College. Schofield College, it turns out, is where Myrtle's mother studied many years ago, before Myrtle herself was thought...

★★★★☆ A deception exposed

Fanes That Lie Seanan McGuire Fanes That Lie is Seanan McGuire 's November 2023 Patreon story. It follows Distinction of Place , her June 2023 story. She introduces it as follows We're back to Tybalt and the Brittany timeline as we try to resolve the question of Quickbeam and what's actually going on in the kingdom next door. Fans of random trivia will love this one, as it names additional hope chests. When we left Distinction of Place things were looking bad. Tybalt's Ward Rozenn, whom he has come to love as a daughter, has been stolen away. It is clear that King Alban and his consort Gaëlle are making some kind of power play based on an illusion of having retrieved the Hope Chest Quickbeam. Tybalt doesn't really care about this so much -- her just wants Rozenn back and free. However, he's going to have to figure it out. Tybalt decides to take the desperate and dangerous step of seeking out one of the Firstborn, the Following Fire, Hirsent, founder of the ...

★★★★★ Mhari and the New Management

The Labyrinth Index Charles Stross, Bianca Amato (narrator) Book 8 of Charles Stross 's Laundry Files , The Delirium Brief , ended with The senior auditor making an almost literal deal with the devil. Not the Christian Adversary Satan, but a different devil, the Black Pharaoh, N’yar Lat-Hotep. The SA judged that the Black Pharaoh was a lesser evil than the Sleeper in the Pyramid (who may be Cthulhu -- I'm a bit confused about that). The Black Pharaoh defeated the Sleeper in England and is now Prime Minister of the UK. This world, in which the Black Pharaoh rules the United Kingdom, is the setting of Stross 's New Management series, which he regards as a new and separate series from the Laundry Files . And it is! Except for occasional cameos by Laundry Files characters, the characters and plots of the New Management are quite separate from the Laundry Files . The Labyrinth Index is a kind of hybrid, in that it ...

★★★★☆ All about the cassandra sangue

Vision in Silver Anne Bishop Vision in Silver is the third novel in Anne Bishop 's The Others urban fantasy series. The second novel, Murder of Crows , ended with the Others, in a shock and awe campaign, raiding the compounds that kept cassandra sangue and sold their prophecies for enormous profit. It now transpires that cassandra sangue are psychologically fragile. The folks with whom they've been placed (some are terra indigene and some are allied humans) are struggling to keep the girls alive and healthy. The problem is exacerbated by the Humans First and Last movement, which is successfully exploiting it for propaganda against the Others. Nicholas Scratch, a pseudonymous demagogue from Cel-Romano, claims that the Others kidnapped vulnerable human girls from facilities where they had been cared for, and are now failing to take care of them. In fact, he is paving the way for a war of the humans of Cel-Romano against the...

★★★★☆ Permafrost and Fuji

Nine Black Doves Roger Zelazny Nine Black Doves is volume five of the masterful Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny . (For an overview of the series, see my review of the first volume , Threshold .) This volume, covering the years 1981-1990 maintains the high standards of scholarship of the series. By this time Zelazny 's output was mostly in the form of novels, which pay better, word for word, than short stories. However, he never stopped writing stories until his death, thus this six-volume collection. During these years Zelazny and his wife June grew apart and he and Jane Lindskold fell in love. This one is a mixed bag -- that's par for the course with Zelazny , who never stopped experimenting, especially with his short stories. Many of these stories are collaborations with other authors, if only in the sense of using ideas from others at their request, and these, in my opinion, are not quite so good. Undiluted Zelazny ...

Search This Blog