Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde

Something Rotten (2004) (Hodder)
Jasper Fforde
Grade: A-
Genre: fiction / crime / alternate reality
Source: own
Thursday Next: (1) The Eyre Affair, (2) Lost in a Good Book, (3) The Well of Lost Plots, (4) Something Rotten

TBR RBC 2015: A book by Jasper Fforde 

After two years as the ‘Bellman’, head of Jurisfiction in The Well of Lost Plots (the place where all fiction is written), Thursday has decided that she’s had enough. While the work keeps her busy and certainly keeps her busy, she needs to get back to the real world to get her husband, Landen, uneradicated by the mammoth Goliath corporation and let her son grow up in a world out of books. Tasked with acclimatising Hamlet to the real world, evading both her official stalker and the assassin trying to kill her, stopping a coup against President George Formby, trying to save all Danish books from a terrible fate and preventing the end of the world with an awesome game of Superhoop, will Thursday ever have time to fix her own troubles?

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

The Well of Lost Plots (2003) (Hodder)
Jasper Fforde
Grade: B+
Genre: fiction / crime / alternate reality
Source: own
Thursday Next: (1) The Eyre Affair, (2) Lost in a Good Book, (3) The Well of Lost Plots

General RBC 2015: A funny book 

Former literary detective Thursday Next has recently taken up residence in the Well of Lost Plots, the place where all fiction is created. In the real world, the evil Goliath Corporation want her dead and she needs to think about the safety of her unborn child. Settling in to Cavendish Heights, an unpublished novel of dubious quality, this is the perfect time for Thursday to consider how she’s going to approach single-parenthood and how she can reverse Goliath’s eradication of her husband, Landen. Amidst training with Miss Havisham to become a Jurisfiction agent and saving Cavendish Heights from a disastrous future, Thursday realises that something is seriously wrong in the Well and must work out who she can trust, and who wants her dead …

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

Lost in a Good Book (2002) (Hodder)
Jasper Fforde
Grade: B+
Genre: fiction / crime / alternate reality
Source: own
Thursday Next: (1) The Eyre Affair, (2) Lost in a Good Book, (3) The Well of Lost Plots

Fiction RBC 2014: The second book in a series 

Having just married the man of her dreams (after a very lengthy estrangement) and concluded the biggest case of her career as an operative in the Literary Detectives division (rescuing the fate of Jane Eyre from the hands of criminal mastermind Acheron), Thursday Next is ready for a little less excitement in her life. Adventure, however, is more than happy to find her and turn Thursday’s life inconveniently upside-down.

In a puzzling string of events, it becomes clear that Landon, Thursday’s newly-wed husband of just four weeks, drowned as a toddler thirty-eight years ago and no one other than Thursday has any memory of history being otherwise. The threatening Goliath corporation wants Thursday to rescue their operative Jack Schitt from the poem in which she’d trapped him, and are willing to go to any lengths to fulfil their goals. Thursday begins a mission to discover the truth while evading interviews and the press, trying to keep out of Goliath's clutches and going on a series of new literary adventures ...

Pantomime by Laura Lam

Pantomime (2013) (Strange Chemistry)
Laura Lam
Grade: B-
Genre: young adult / fantasy
Source: own
Pantomime: (1) Pantomime

Young adult RBC 2014: A book with a lion, a witch or a wardrobe 

Iphigenia Laurus – or Gene, to anyone who will listen – is the only daughter of a noble family. Her brother is her best friend, but her mother, while she has Gene’s best interests at heart, can be unbearably coddling. Born ‘different’, Gene’s very self is her greatest secret and given her social station, she’s destined to a life of corsets, petticoats and repressing her preferences for shedding her dresses and climbing trees and scaffolding …

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

The Blue Sword (1982) (Firebird)
Robin McKinley
Grade: C+
Genre: fantasy / young adult
Source: own
Damar: (1) The Blue Sword

Young adult RBC 2014: A book with an incredible fight scene

When orphaned Homelander Harry Crewe is sent to live with an adopted family in Istan, she settles surprisingly well into her new home. She feels a strange affinity for the deserts that surrounds the town and she’s delighted to be reunited with her brother, Richard, after he was sent away for military service. She can’t explain her insatiable curiosity about the Hillfolk – natives of the Damar land who have taken to living in the hills when the area was colonized by Homelanders.

Daughter of Camelot by Glynis Cooney

Daughter of Camelot (2013) (Mabon Publishing)
Glynis Cooney
Grade: A-
Genre: young adult / Arthurian legend / fantasy
Source: NetGalley 
YA Reading Bingo Challenge 2014: A book based on a myth

About to celebrate their fourteenth birthdays, twins Deirdre and Rhys are inseparable. In their superstitious community, twins are a sign of bad luck, but they have learnt to ignore the stares and whispers. Her father has always turned a blind eye at Deirdre’s boyish exploits with her brother and best friend Reece, but that’s about to change. Rhys is to embark on the last stage of his training to become a Knight while Deirdre is to accompany her older sister Nia to learn the finer points of etiquette in being a lady.

Court life is much different to what Deirdre had expected. With news of Lancelot and Guinevere’s betrayal fresh on everybody’s lips, kingdoms are quickly taking sides and it is up to Deirdre and Nia to learn all they can in their family’s pledge to support the High King. Court politics are complicated and for Deirdre, dangerous when she overhears a traitorous conversation that wasn’t intended for her ears. She suddenly finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy that she’s determined to topple as part of her bid to thwart Arthur’s destiny …

Lucretia and the Kroons by Victor Lavalle

Lucretia and the Kroons (2012) (novella) (Random House)
Victor Lavalle
Grade: C+
Genre: horror
Source: NetGalley 

On the day of Lucretia’s (Loochie) birthday party, Loochie’s elder brother Louis warns Loochie and her best friend Sunny of the Kroons. The Kroons have lived in apartment 6D for as long as anyone can Louis can remember and as a result of their crack addictions, are deformed beyond measure.  Louis regales Loochie with the tale of how the Kroons very nearly once captured him and how when children go missing at the hands of the Kroons, they are never seen again. Loochie, who was only looking forward to spending time with her best friend after Sunny’s cancer treatment, is horrified.

The Guild by Felicia Day and Jim Rugg

The Guild (2010) (Dark Horse)
Felicia Day and Jim Rugg
Grade: A-
Genre: graphic novel
Source: library

Cyd Sherman is a violinist in an orchestra (she sits right at the back) with a boyfriend in a band who spends more time trying to make his band ‘unique’ than with her. As if her life wasn’t depressing enough, her gay father has guilt-tripped her into therapy and her therapist thinks that she’s anti-social. The day that she buys her first computer game changes her life irreparably.

Online, Cyd is a whole different person – literally. Under the name of Codex, Cyd can battle dragons, rescue princesses and win gold to buy herself a snazzy new outfit or weapons. With her new friends, Zaboo, Vork, Bladezz, Clara and Tink, they form a Guild called the Knights of Good. As Priestess, Codex can do anything and before long, she becomes immersed in this fantasy world.

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkein

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937) (Collins Modern Classics)
J.R.R. Tolkien
Grade: A+
Genre: high fantasy
Source: own

Bilbo Baggins is your ordinary Hobbit from the Shire: he enjoys his food, his comfortable lifestyle in his own hobbit-hole, and the prospect of a leisurely life to the end of his days. Bilbo is descended from the respected Bagginses and the slightly less-respected Tooks – the latter of whom have a great sense of adventure ingrained into them. At fifty years of age, Bilbo has never felt the urge to go off and have jolly adventures of his own – until now.

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair (2001) (Hodder and Stoughton)
Jasper Fforde
Grade: A
Genre: the rag-bag of genres as described below
Source: own, World Book Night edition
Thursday Next: (1) The Eyre Affair, (2) Lost in a Good Book, (3) The Well of Lost Plots

The year is 1985, the Crimean War is still waging on, dodos are in fashion, the public have a fascination with all things literary, and characters from Great English works of literary fiction are in great peril …

Thursday Next is a Crimean War veteran and a member of Special Ops 27: Literary Detectives. Her speciality is Shakespeare and her idea of an exciting day at work would be apprehending a group of literary fraudsters. When a first-edition of Martin Chuzzlewit goes missing, Thursday is put on the case as she designed the security designed to protect the work in the first place. She’s on the trail of Acheron, her former English lecturer at Swindon and a man whose name her superiors don’t dare to even utter. It is said that he knows whenever his name is said, and that no bullet can stop him …