Rating: [rate 4.5]

It is fourteen years since Thursday Next pegged out at the 1988 SuperHoop, and the Special Operations Network has been disbanded. Using Swindon’s Acme Carpets as a front, Thursday and her colleagues Bowden, Stig and Spike continue their same professions, but illegally.

Of course, this front is itself a front for Thursday’s continued work at Jurisfiction, the Policing agency within the bookworld, and she is soon grappling with a recalcitrant new apprentice, an inter-genre war or two, and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy books.

As the Council of Genres decree that making books interactive will boost flagging readership levels and Goliath attempt to perfect a trans-fictional tourist coach, Thursday finds herself in the onerous position of having to side with the enemy to destroy a greater evil that threatens the very fabric of the reading experience.

With Aornis Hades once again on the prowl, an idle sixteen-year-old son who would rather sleep in than save the world from the end of time, a government with a dangerously high stupidity surplus and the Swindon Stiltonistas trying to muscle in on her cheese-smuggling business, Thursday must once again travel to the very outer limits of acceptable narrative possibilities to triumph against increasing odds.
[from jasperfforde.com]

Finally I got a copy of this book! I’ve waited for a YEAR to get this one on paperback and thank God I found one last weekend. :) How I missed reading about Thursday Next!

Thursday is back, and it’s fourteen years later. It’s 2002, and things are fine, but not quite. Friday is not being the ChronoGuard trainee he is supposed to be, her uncle Mycroft who died six years ago is showing up as a ghost but he has no idea how, less and less people are reading books and more focused on reality shows and MP3 players, and she has to keep her undercover freelance SpecOps work and Jurisfiction duties from her love, Landen. Oh, and she has to train a Jurisfiction cadet, who is no other than Thursday Next-5, the character from a book based on her. Oh, and the world as they know it could end in a few days if Friday doesn’t shape up…yeah, everything’s fine. ;)

I won’t spoil anyone by revealing more of the plot, but if you’re new to Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next, I won’t recommend getting this book since there’s a lot of references from the previous four books. Also, if you haven’t read any of the Next novels in a while, it might take a while before you can really get with the flow of the story.

It’s a great read, and if you’re a Fforde fan you musn’t miss this. :D I did find some parts kind of dragging, but it builds up nicely up to the end, and it has such a cliffhanger ending that I can’t wait for the next one …which won’t be out until 2009.

But read it! This book series is best for people who likes books as well, so if you’re a certified bookworm, this is one book you should add to your must-reads! :D