Name: Jeff James's review of One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde
Item: One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
Rating: 3
Author: Jeff James

Jasper Fforde

An imminent war compels the Council of Genres to enlist the written Thursday to emulate her retired living self on a peace-keeping mission up the Metaphoric River, a journey that reveals a fiendish plot.

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

Sian Wadey

Jeff James

If you happen to be a book nerd who likes fantasy, mystery, satire and a healthy dose of metafiction, the Thursday Next series will be right up your alley. It quickly became one of my favorite series after I read the first five books in a mad rush over the last year. However, after finishing the sixth installment, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, I’m unsure how I feel about the future of the Thursday Next books.

On one hand, One of Our Thursdays is Missing is a reboot with a different viewpoint character, but on the other hand it’s also the most self-referential of the entire series so far, and probably the worst possible place to jump into the series as a whole. Also, because it’s a Jasper Fforde book, telling you that there is a new viewpoint character is a huge oversimplification.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, it’s about Thursday Next, a police detective in an alternate universe who is able to leap into fiction and uses her powers to solve mysteries both in the “RealWorld” and the “BookWorld”. That’s only scratching the surface, however; Fforde overstuffs the books with an insane number of alternate-world details and odd little touches. It makes the books almost impossible to accurately summarize.

The short version is that Thursday’s adventures were novelized by ghost writers in her world. What this means is that there is a “real” Thursday and a “fictional” Thursday. The fictional Thursday is sort of a cross between an actor and a clone of the real Thursday. Fictional Thursday only has to perform when someone in the RealWorld is reading one of her books. However, readership numbers are dropping and she finds herself with too much free time on her hands. When she hears rumors that the real Thursday may have disappeared, fictional Thursday begins a surreptitious investigation, and almost immediately finds herself in over her head.

Much like her RealWorld counterpart, fictional Thursday is driven to solve this mystery at all costs. However, she isn’t exactly like the real version; in the book series, her husband, Landen, was killed off in the first book to “raise the stakes”, and she finds herself envious of the real Thursday’s family. She also doesn’t consider herself quite as talented a detective, especially since she flunked her entrance exam for the BookWorld police force.

The overall portrayal of fictional Thursday is my main problem with this book. When we were initially introduced to this fictional version of Thursday in the fifth book, she was portrayed as a hippie do-gooder who is too much of a pacifist for proper police work. However, in this book she mostly just behaves like a less confident version of the real Thursday. She tells us that she would probably solve problems by hugging everyone, but it felt like I never really saw the differences in her personality in action. Mostly she just seemed like a diminished version of the real thing. Fforde takes away a lot of the real Thursday’s defining characteristics and doesn’t give us anything truly compelling in their stead.

Also, a word of warning: Fforde really likes to throw in little metafictional jokes. Some of the stuff in this book relies on a fairly thorough knowledge of previous events in the series. It was definitely a huge help that I’d read all of the books in short succession. I’m not sure I would have caught all of the little details that Fforde throws in otherwise. However, even with all of that knowledge, I was occasionally a bit confused by events, and wondered if Fforde knew what he was doing. My best advice is just to try to relax and enjoy the ride.

Ultimately, I have to say that this is my least favorite of the Thursday Next books. A lot of what I love about Fforde’s books is present – his incisive touch for satire, madcap plotting, and crackpot world-building – but it just didn’t have the same heart as the previous installments. I never really warmed up to the fictional Thursday Next as a protagonist. In my opinion, she doesn’t rise above her status as a stand-in for the real deal.

As for the future of the series, I’m not quite sure where it will go from here. The first four books are a sort of loose quartet, and when I finished the fifth it seemed likely that he was setting up another trilogy or quartet. Instead, Fforde made a complete left turn and gave us this book, which doesn’t really follow up on the fifth book and mostly ends up being a bit of a standalone story and/or narrative cul-de-sac. My hope is that Fforde has further adventures planned for the real Thursday Next, or that he at least does more to make the fictional Thursday’s perspective distinct if she returns in future volumes.

The sixth instalment of Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde's sensational Thursday Next series. 'Fforde's books are more than just an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terrible mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They also have more twists and turns than Christie, and are embellished with the rich details of Dickens or Pratchett' - Independent It is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld or is this something more sinister? All is not yet lost. Living at the quiet end of speculative fiction is the written Thursday Next, eager to prove herself worth of her illustrious namesake. The written Thursday is soon hot on the trail of her factual alter-ego, and quickly stumbles upon a plot so fiendish that it threatens the very BookWorld itself.

Thursday Next Book 6

One of our Thursdays is Missing

Jeni Enjaian

At first I did not enjoy this book as much as the others. Honestly, I was quite confused at the beginning, trying to figure out where everything was taking place and what on earth had happened to Thursday. (I'm still wondering if I read the books out of order or something since First Among Sequels ended in a sort-of cliffhanger fashion.)

It took a little while to figure out but once I realized that this was the written Thursday (Thursday 5) I started to get into the book, really into it. I absolutely love Sprocket and wish that he had a continuing role in the books.

I really loved how Thursday 5 grew as a character. The reformed book world was also a stroke of genius. I absolutely loved all the allusions and other literary connections that Fforde makes with ease. This plot in this book, on its own, makes perfect sense. In fact, it also connects with things mentioned in other Thursday Next books. However, I'm still bothered by the lack of connection to the "serial killer" introduced at the end of "First Among Sequels". Perhaps I missed something when I read that book but I do not recall a resolution to that plot bit introduced towards the end of the book.

I continue to enjoy this sequel series almost as much as the original. If I wanted more of the original then I would be supremely disappointed. If I acknowledge the fact that this is a completely new series with fairly substantial connections to the first then my expectations are appropriate. I also continue to highly recommend this book, this series and all of Fforde's books.

Everyone's favourite literary detective, Thursday Next, is back, in the long-awaited sequal. With the advent of the eReader, and all-out genre war in the Great Library, the Bookworld is in turmoil - and needs Thursday.

Sian Wadey &
One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde

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One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde