Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series

First of all, some explanation about Thursday's alternate universe must be provided. United Kingdom does not exists, England is a republic and the Whig Party is still in the Commons. Technologies are advanced to the point that dodos can be cloned, mammoths can live and Neanderthals have been resurrected. There is also the Goliath Corporation that has a great power and influence and that constitutes one the great enemy of Thursday and fair justice. 
 

Then there is a governmental force called the SpecOps which includes many branches that go from the “police of the police” to The ChronoGuard, the Office for Special Temporal Stability or the one that deals with vampires and werewolves. Among them stands the division in which Thursday works : Specops 27 – the literary detectives. But one question remains, who is Thursday Next ?

In 1985, Thursday, in her thirties is a former soldier in the still existing Crimean War. She is the daughter of a member of the ChronoGuard who does not exist due to his eradication, the niece of scientist whose craziness and genius reminds of Dr Emmett Brown's own genius and the future wife of a former soldier now writer who will also have his period of non-existence. Thursday becomes famous in her world when her greatest enemy Acheron Hades almost made Jane Eyre's plot collapse. Indeed, in Thursday's universe, people may travel into books thanks to her uncle Mycroft's creation : the Prose Portal. Moreover, books have their own police called Jurisfiction which is managed by characters from Literature as Miss Havisham, the abandoned bride from Dicken's Great Expectations.

Briefly, in the first volume of her adventures – The Eyre Affair - members of her family are kidnapped by Hades and entrapped into books. She eventually kills him. In the second volume – Lost in a Good Book - she becomes acquainted with Jurisficiton and learns how to be one of its agent. She also has to face the end of the world. In the third one – The Well of Lost Plots - she is pregnant, she does not remember her husband and hides in a book in the well of lost plots, a place in the fictional world, in order to remember him again. In Something Rotten, the fourth volume, Thursday brings to the real world the Shakespearian character Hamlet for an excursion and has to face a Minotaur aimed at killing her as well as a suspicious politician called Yorrick Kaine. The last volume to be found on bookshelves – First Among Sequels - sees Thursday dealing with her literary doubles as Jurisfiction potential agents, with convincing her son to be part of the ChronoGuard in order to save the future and with the group Goliath, still avid of control over the world. This was very brief and a lot of elements are missing but you can see how she has a full life.

If you liked British and American literature, you should read Fforde's novels as soon as possible. The plots refer to other literary works, tendencies and genres, as well as sub-plots or names do. But mostly Fforde's novels are filled with literary references scattered throughout the volumes. The characters may not be as developed as in great novels but Fforde's initiative is nonetheless pleasant to read. He plays with Literature and History, he has mixed up comic fantasy, detective stories and science fiction to deliver a crazily lighted and funny world in one collection. Have a nice trip in literature.

The Thursday Next Series

• The Eyre Affair (2001)
• Lost in a Good Book (2002)
• The Well of Lost Plots (2003)
• Something Rotten (2004)
• First Among Sequels (2007)
• One of our Thursdays is Missing (Announced for January 2011)

Nursery Crimes Division Series

• The Big Over Easy (2005)
• The Fourth Bear (2006)
• The Last Great Tortoise Race (Unknown)