When special operations, literary detective, pet Dodo owner, daughter of a chronic time traveler and niece of eccentric inventors, Thursday Next is approached to help capture an evil villain aptly named Hades who’s suspected of stealing a Dickens’ manuscript, she barely thinks twice before saying yes.She soon finds herself in Swindon, her hometown, and a place full of memories, an ex-fiancé and more evil villains.

Jasper Fforde has crammed time-travel, books within books, tons of literary references, extinct pets, cops and robbers, detectives, magic and more into this humorous post-modern* novel. Characters travel on airships instead of airplanes, take vacations into classic gothic novels, join organizations focused on catching meteors and change their name to John Milton. Riots break out between fanatics of conflicting art movements.

This book has everything a lover of reading (especially the classics) could want, and more. It has a lot of what a fan of science fiction might enjoy as well. Devotees of detective novels won’t be disappointed either.

I’d seen the title of this book before someone recommended it to me. I must have known it had appeal to detective novel enthusiasts because I didn’t give it a second thought. When my daughter’s friend, who knew I enjoyed reading about time-travel, recommended it to me I thought I’d give it a go.

Unfortunately I didn’t get into it until well into the second half of the book. I’d mostly been confused by the plot and sub-plots, not to mention the names of characters. I spent a lot of time wondering why Fforde chose to name a police chief Braxton Hicks. And I’d heard the phrase runcible spoon, but didn’t know what it was nor why a doctor would be given that name.

In the end I sort of liked the book. I could see that it was probably really funny to someone who got all the jokes and literary allusions. I do believe that Jasper Fforde is probably a genius – but I’m just not the right person to appreciate it. It did make me want to re-read Jane Eyre though, and that’s a good thing.I plan on reading the second book in this series. I’m betting I like it better, now that I know what is going on, to a degree.

*I’d not understood what post modern meant until I read this book and the "ah-ha" light went on over my head.