Something Rotten
By Jasper Fforde
Penguin books,


Something Rotten is the fourth in the Thursday Next Series, being preceded by The Well of Lost Plots and followed by The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco and followed by First Among Sequels. These books should be read in order, so if you have not already done so, go read The Eyre Affair ASAP.

This book marks Thursday's exit from the Bookworld (for now, anyway), and the reentrance into the normal world. And things are slowly getting back to normal -- her husband is back, mostly, probably, and she's getting her old job back... eventually. Of course, there are things she has to take care of first. The minotaur is loose, and may be trying to hunt Thursday down. Hamlet is hiding out in the real world while his play slowly falls to pieces. And Yorrick Kaine is trying to set up Danes as the next political cause -- they are clearly evil and every trace of them must be banished from England. So there are the book-burnings and rated hate crimes to deal with. And Friday is two-years old, and speaks only in Lorem Ipsum, and finding childcare is murder. And some 13th-century prophet is due to reincarnate. And no, that's not all. Not even nearly.

At this point the series is starting to settle down into a steady stream of interesting wackiness. We've already jumped the shark multiple times, and either the readers are hooked or they gave up after the last book, so this is really just more of the same -- although we are (mostly) out of the bookworld, so that's a bit of a plus. And the Neanderthals are back in the story, which I think is an even bigger plus. The long and short of it is that you should start reading The Eyre Affair, and stop reading when it all gets to be too much. If you never make it to this book, that's fine. But do read The Eyre Affair, it's great.

ISBN-10: 014303541X
ISBN-13: 978-0143035411

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