Thursday Next: First Among Sequels

Description

The fifth installment in Jasper Fforde’s New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England—from the author of The Constant Rabbit

Jasper Fforde has thrilled readers everywhere with his gloriously outlandish novels in the Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series. And with another genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainmentis Thursday Next: First Among Sequels, Fforde’s famous literary detective is once again ready to make the world safe for fiction. Thursday Next is grappling with a host of problems in BookWorld: a recalcitrant new apprentice, the death of Sherlock Holmes, and the inexplicable departure of comedy from the once-hilarious Thomas Hardy novels, to name just a few—all while captaining the ship Moral Dilemma and facing down her most vicious enemy yet: herself.“Playful . . . It’s not hard to see what this enthusiasm is about. . . . It’s easy to be delighted by a writer who loves books so madly.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“What keeps this series humming is Fforde’s lively engagement with books and the indefatigable woman he’s created to defend them.”
—People

“Richly crammed with jokes, ideas, and action. Brainier silliness is hard to find”
—USA Today

“The BookWorld seems to have encouraged Fforde’s rogue imagination to escape all fetters and really go wild.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“For the past six years, Jasper Fforde has been . . . churning out one impossibly winning book after the next about Thursday Next. You needn’t have spent half your childhood sitting up at night with a flashlight reading these books to enjoy First Among Sequels. What captivates here is something that will appeal to any reader—and that’s the feeling that there’s something at stake in fiction, that characters created in books are every bit as real as the memory of a person. Of all the Thursday books, this one is by far the most busily plotted, but Fforde’s greatest gift is on display. He beautifully captures that sense of embattlement which hovers over readers today in a world crowed with other forms of entertainment.”
—John Freeman, Newsday

“Bookworms looking for a new literary world to escape to after Harry Potter may find this a welcome addition to the bookshelf.”
—The Boston Globe

“An invigorating romp for all lovers of literature. In his 2003 novel The Eyre Affair, Fforde introduced readers to a futuristic world where books reigned supreme. Now, years later, [Thursday Next] is back, older, wiser, married with children and working for Jurisdiction, the policing agency that works within books. It’s not entirely necessary—though perhaps more fun—to read the books in the proper order. Fforde gives enough background in Thursday Next to inform readers of all they need to know to find both books hilarious, entertaining.”
—Kim Curtis, Associated Press

“First Among Sequels is so jam-packed with goofy jokes and shaggy plot lines that some readers may tire before the end. That would be a shame, since they’d miss the book’s exciting conclusion on the dangerous high seas of piratical swashbuckling. Argh!”
—The Seattle Times

“[With a] furiously agile imagination . . . Fforde has shaken up genres—fantasy, comedy, crime, sci-fi, parody, literary criticism—and come up with a superb mishmash with lots of affectionate in-jokes for any book lover. There’s a good chance the aptly titled First Among Sequels is the best of Fforde’s novels.”
—The Miami Herald

“Fforde really unleashes his imagination, and it knows no bounds, especially in reference to specific books, displaying . . . his ‘bibliowit.’ Despite all the allusions, illusions, neologisms, puns, and other literary sleights-of-hand, the reader comes to see that for all its futuristic, alternate-world shenanigans, First Among Sequels is a down-to-earth (well, sort of) cautionary tale about good and evil, as well as a family-centered love story about a good marriage.”
—The Washington Times

“Warning: Reading one of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels could, if you are not careful, have the effect of making other novels appear dull, uninspired, pedestrian, and predictable. Outright silliness . . . surrounded by strokes of inspired, demented genius. This is a novel with a deep love for fiction and a respect for how books, more than any other medium, can transform a life.”
—The Tampa Tribute

“Fans of satiric literary humor are in for a treat.”
—Knoxville News

“Reads like a well-edited Harry Potter; First Among Sequels is for adults who want sophisticated with their fantasy, but who still possess an appreciation for the intricate world-building of a well-imagined children’s novel. Canonical in-jokes abound. . . .What dedicated reader wouldn’t laugh at the suggestion of a parallel universe in which Jude the Obscure is renowned as a comic novel?”
—New Statesman

“What is most enjoyable about Jasper Fforde’s work is not its silliness—though there is plenty of that. It is admiring the skill that keeps all of those silly balls in the air. First Among Sequels does something as highly improbably as the life of its heroine: it continues to surprise and entertain. What makes Fforde’s work such fun is [his] unrestrained combination of wit and lunacy. Underlying that, though, is a love of a good story that rights true. It works magnificently.”
—The Denver Post

“Recommending Fforde’s novels is a bookseller’s dilemma. You can go on about literature-as-technology in popular culture in the Nextian world. . . . Or you can tackle his Nursery Crime series. But handselling First Among Sequels is easy. Just hand [the reader] a copy and tell them to read a couple of pages—and have plenty of earlier titles on hand, because you’ll sell them too!”
—Publishers Weekly

“Irrepressibly playful and relentlessly imaginative.”
—Adam Begley, The New York ObserverJasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring vacantly out of the window and arranging words on a page. He lives and writes in Wales. The Eyre Affair was his first novel in the bestselling series of Thursday Next novels, which includes Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels, One of Our Thursdays is Missing, and The Woman Who Died A Lot. The series has more than one million copies (and counting) in print. He is also the author of The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear of the Nursery Crime series, Shades of Grey, and books for young readers, including The Last Dragonslayer. Visit jasperfforde.com.

INTRODUCTION
It’s 2002, fourteen years after Thursday’s last adventure battling a rogue book character in the Outland. Swindon seems to have quieted down since the excitement of the 1988 SuperHoop. The politicians’ biggest concern these days is which act of idiocy would be the best way to spend the growing, unwieldy stupidity surplus. Thursday and her husband, Landen Parke-Laine, now have three children. Thursday has settled into a quiet, normal life, dropping out of the SpecOps and Jurisfiction games completely.

Or has she? The SpecOps units, formed to police the stranger crime elements such as supernatural and literary offenses, have officially disbanded; unofficially, however, they have gone underground, working quietly behind a business front that installs carpets across town. Despite her promises to Landen, Thursday has also been secretly policing the BookWorld with her Jurisfiction colleagues, and the death of Sherlock Holmes, the discovery of book probes, and falling Outland reading rates have put the BookWorld on edge.

In an effort to fill out the dwindling Jurisfiction forces, Thursday must mentor two apprentices—two very different doppelgängers born in the books written about her own life. One of them, Thursday5, is a hippie-dippy do-gooder from the fifth feel-good novel of Thursday’s adventures. The other, Thursday1–4, is an uncensored, oversexed gunslinger from the first four unauthorized novels. Thursday1–4 finally finds an opportunity to exact revenge on Thursday for her neglect of the factually challenged unauthorized series. As her first order of havoc-wreaking business, Thursday1–4, posing as the real Thursday, jumps into the Outland and into Thursday’s home. Before Thursday can reduce the rogue to text, Thursday1–4 steals her TravelBook, effectively locking her mentor out of the BookWorld completely.

Meanwhile, Thursday’s eldest child, Friday Next, is now a “grunty and unintelligible” sixteen-year-old. Friday is destined to become one of the ChronoGuard’s most respected and influential leaders—if Thursday can convince him to join in time to help invent time travel. Everyone in the Chronoguard, including a clean-cut overachieving alternate Friday, is campaigning to help her force Friday into the service of time. But if the real Friday knows his role in the invention of time travel, he’s refusing to give it up, despite threats to his existence.

While Thursday tries to find a way back into the BookWorld, her evil impostor gives the green light to a project that will rewrite the English classics, complete with audience call-in votes directing the story, starting with Pride and Prejudice. To save books from being turned into reality television shows, Thursday must turn to her sworn enemy, the Goliath Corporation. It has made progress on the Austen Rover, the first interliterary tour bus ever created. Goliath has solicited Thursday’s help to map the Rover’s entry into the BookWorld since, without it, they could easily wind up lost in the Nothing—vast, treacherous areas of abandoned Dark Reading Matter. But Goliath has ulterior motives in trying to jump into the BookWorld, and Thursday won’t find out until she’s trapped at sea in an excruciating moral dilemma. Can Thursday save the literary canon from decimation by creative democracy?

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