Description
Product Description
The fifth installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of The Constant Rabbit
Jasper Fforde has thrilled readers everywhere with his gloriously outlandish novels in the Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series. And with another genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainmentis
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, Fforde’s famous literary detective is once again ready to make the world safe for fiction. Thursday Next is grappling with a host of problems in BookWorld: a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of Sherlock Holmes, and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy novels, to name just a few—all while captaining the ship
Moral Dilemma and facing down her most vicious enemy yet: herself.
Review
“Playful . . . It’s not hard to see what this enthusiasm is about. . . . It’s easy to be delighted by a writer who loves books so madly.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“What keeps this series humming is Fforde’s lively engagement with books and the indefatigable woman he’s created to defend them
.”—People
“Richly crammed with jokes, ideas, and action. Brainier silliness is hard to find”
—USA Today
“The BookWorld seems to have encouraged Fforde’s rogue imagination to escape all fetters and really go wild.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“For the past six years, Jasper Fforde has been . . . churning out one impossibly winning book after the next about Thursday Next. You needn’t have spent half your childhood sitting up at night with a flashlight reading these books to enjoy
First Among Sequels. What captivates here is something that will appeal to any reader—and that’s the feeling that there’s something at stake in fiction, that characters created in books are every bit as real as the memory of a person. Of all the Thursday books, this one is by far the most busily plotted, but Fforde’s greatest gift is on display. He beautifully captures that sense of embattlement which hovers over readers today in a world crowed with other forms of entertainment.”
—
John Freeman, Newsday
“Bookworms looking for a new literary world to escape to after Harry Potter may find this a welcome addition to the bookshelf.”
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The Boston Globe
“An invigorating romp for all lovers of literature. In his 2003 novel
The Eyre Affair, Fforde introduced readers to a futuristic world where books reigned supreme. Now, years later, [Thursday Next] is back, older, wiser, married with children and working for Jurisdiction, the policing agency that works within books. It’s not entirely necessary—though perhaps more fun—to read the books in the proper order. Fforde gives enough background in Thursday Next to inform readers of all they need to know to find both books hilarious, entertaining.”
—
Kim Curtis, Associated Press
“
First Among Sequels is so jam-packed with goofy jokes and shaggy plot lines that some readers may tire before the end. That would be a shame, since they’d miss the book’s exciting conclusion on the dangerous high seas of piratical swashbuckling. Argh!”
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The Seattle Times
“[With a] furiously agile imagination . . . Fforde has shaken up genres—fantasy, comedy, crime, sci-fi, parody, literary criticism—and come up with a superb mishmash with lots of affectionate in-jokes for any book lover. There’s a good chance the aptly titled
First Among Sequels is the best of Fforde’s novels.”
—
The Miami Herald
“Fforde really unleashes his imagination, and it knows no bounds, especially in reference to specific books, displaying . . . his ‘bibliowit.’ Despite all the allusions, illusions, neologisms, puns, and other literary sleights-of-hand, the reader comes to see that for all its futuristic, alternate-world shenanigans,
First Among Sequels is a down-to-earth (well, sort of) cautionary tale about good an