Fforde, Jasper - The Eyre Affair

[oyceter]

Another one of the "I was running out of books and desperately had to pick something up" buys. Plus, the cover described it as a cross between Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking, and Buffy.

It's not all that much like Buffy imho, but it's good fun, especially to a bookworm. It's set in an alternate Britain which needs time cops and literary detectives, and that alone would have snagged me -- it's a world in which people ardently care as to who really wrote Shakespeare's plays and Baconians go around protesting and there is a Bronte Appreciation Society.

Very much a mystery novel type voice, so I didn't get very emotionally involved, but then, I didn't quite think that was the point. I was having fun with the Jane Eyre stuff (I really need to read that now).

I did also feel Thursday's long-lost love thing with Landen was kind of stupid.

I think my brain has just shut down.

Mostly the book made me think more about the Genre Rant and how it is really a sci-fi book or a mystery, but it's shelved in literature because it's respectable. Kind of like the marketing for Crusie -- she says she's still writing romances, but that's not how they're selling them.

Links:
- rilina's review
- minnow1212's review

Comments

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

If you liked the first enough to continue, the next two books in the series are even better. I'm halfway through the third, The Well of Lost Plots now, and so far, it's my favorite. And the fourth, Something Rotten is coming out in August!

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Is there a way to skip the first and go forward? The others are better? I was so excited to get this as it seemed that a number of people really liked it and tbh, I couldn't get into the first...

*small sigh*

Not really...

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

Although there are some small recaps of previous events built into the text of the second and third, you really need to have read the first, for the foundation, because the story gets incredibly complicated, especially regarding the mythology of the universe. Characterwise also, a lot of important things happen in the first. I will tell you that I actually also had a little trouble getting through Eyre Affair, although I liked it on the whole, but his writing and the stories, IMO, improve with each book.

[oyceter]

I'm not quite sure if I want to continue -- it's fun, but the mystery thing is not quite up my alley.

Hee, mostly the fact that the second seems to be all about Landen is warning me off a bit.

Oh, not at all...

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

Well, the second has to do with Landen, but he is in very little of it. In fact, less than a quarter of it. If you want a spoiler about the set-up of the plot, that might encourage you to read, highlight here:

And the mystery aspect is always there, it takes a backseat to the more wild and wacky jumping around the book world in the next two volumes. They're where Fforde's imagination really takes flight. I'd really recommend not stopping at "Eyre Affair," because, comparitively, it is the weakest one.

Re: Oh, not at all...

[oyceter]

Hrm, ok. Well, will see if time improves on Thursday (not much of an emotional connection right now, but it may change!).

I love Buffyannotater,

[anneth.livejournal.com]

but I have to disagree that the 2nd and 3rd books are better. When you've read them, we can have us a rip-roaring discussion. I do think Landen's a drip, though.

Re: I love Buffyannotater,

[oyceter]

Hrm. Still up in the air on this -- waiting to see if 1) I can read them for free from the bookstore or the library and 2) the giant stack of other books to be read doesn't bury me alive first ;).

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I think the book's too damned self-congratulatory. "Look! You get this [not very obscure] literary in-joke! Aren't you clever!"

Crusie is now marketed as "women's fiction", which (A) is shelved in the regular fiction section rather than romance and (B) sells much better. It's still a genre, just one that is not yet stigmatized. Although chick-lit is already building its own stigma. Sigh.

[oyceter]

I was okay with that (probably because I was luxuriating in a book-centered world), but I think my main problem was I really had no emotional attachment to Thursday and her problems at all. It played funny and was fairly easy to read, but there's no real drive to find out what happens next to her.

I was interested about the Crusie thing, because I read a snippet on her website on other romance authors migrating to "women's fiction" and how she would steadfastly continue to write romance, because that's what she fell in love with. So I have to hunt for her in various places ... and some have her more recent books in general lit and the Mira reprints in romance.

Very agree about the chick-lit stigma, at least seen via the derogatory comments of the buyers at the bookstore. And while I'm sure a ton of them are probably awful, just because most stuff is, I'm still mad that there's not this horrible stigma connected to thrillers or something, some of which I find to be equally stupid. But then, that's the Genre Rant.