The Well of Lost Plots

Poor Thursday still hasn’t reactualised her non-husband Landen. Even worse she’s beginning to forget him. Could it be the work of that pesky Aornis Hades, lurking in her memories?

At the end of Lost in a Good Book, Thursday Next is persuaded to spend the rest of her pregnancy in a safe place, hidden away in an unpublished book in the Well of Lost Plots. All she has to do is act out her character’s part and stay out of trouble. Everyone in BookWorld is talking about the upcoming upgrade to the new operating system but is it too good to be true? Characters are starting to die and Thursday can’t just sit back and watch.

This instalment is certainly a book for authors as well as readers. The idea is that the books write themselves in BookWorld, that text can be destroyed by pests that steal grammar or the myspeling vyrus and characters are not always happy with their lot in life. There’s a black market in plot devices and generics being trained to take the place of characters across different genres. And of course, the horrors of living in a badly written book.

With all the talks of innovation in publishing recently and the rise of the ebook, The Well of Lost Plots is a rather topical read. There’s an element of pushing the stories and characters aside in favour of “progress” and more profit. It’s all done in a humourous way but it does make you wonder what the characters of BookWorld would make of Kindles and Kobos.

I love the fact that one of Jasper Fforde’s other books is actually a book within Thursday’s world. If you’re a grammar geek I say read it!