The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde - Book Review

The Well of Lost Plots
Jasper Fforde
Hodder Stoughton 2003
Book 3 in the SpecOps Series.
Wikipedia

I found this novel to be full of lost plots as it ALL took place inside the Book World. I was more interested in the Next family and SpecOps and England of 1986, NOT the books. Besides most of the books mentioned are fictional, and as I have mentioned several time, I am NOT a fiction fan. I prefer non-fiction.

Thursday Next is pregnant with her first child, her husband has been eradicated - with noone (except Thursday) having any memories of him at all. So Thursday decides to take a break for a year inside a book where her enemies cannot find her. She joins the Character Exchange Programme where outlanders (real humans) and book characters get to change places for a while.

Inside the Book world is a HUGE Library - called the Great Library. It has 52 levels - 26 above ground, and 26 below ground - one floor for each letter (authors names). These floors are filled with books. The top 26 floors are filled with every fictional book ever published, and the lower 26 floors hold every fictional book that was never published, and occasionally there are ideas for a book that were never written. This library has NO non-fiction.

Are you confused? Me too. The books are policed by the characters themselves under the name of Jurisfiction. Thusday Next settles down inside a small detective novel called Caversham Heights. While on holiday, she is expected to take over the activities of the character she was exchanged with. But Thursday's mentor Miss Haversham (from Great Expectations) has other ideas. Thursday ends up helping Miss Haversham in her Jurisfiction duties, and eventually passes the exam to become a Jurisfiction agent herself.

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During the course of her duties, Thursday has to battle Aornis (a very nasty memory worm) who obliterates Thursdays memories so that she too forgets her husbands name, and at the same time, Thursday must also investigate why several Jurisfiction agents have dissappeared. She discovers that they were killed because of the new upgrade to the Book. The new version about to be released (which is like an e-book reader to us outlanders) ends up having a major restriction - each book can only be read 3 times before being destroyed. This means libraries will no longer be able to lend books, and readers must keep buying books in order to read and remember them.

Thursday must battle the bad guys and the mind worm to save the fictional books and her husband.

While I loved Book 2, I was not too keen on Book 3, because it dealt with fictional books, and it was not set in Thursday's England, the world of Literary Detectives and SpecOps. That is the world I love. Now that Thursday and Landen are reunited, I will try reading Book 4 and hope that it is set back in England.