Title: The Eyre Affair
Author: Jasper Fforde
Rating: 2
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 374 pgs.
Synopsis: It's 1985 in an alternate reality version of England and Thursday Next is a LiteraTec, a detective who investigates literary mysteries. In this world, literature is a *big* deal. There's also time travel and vampire sand seemingly invincible villains. Thursday's uncle has managed to create a machine that uses bookworms (actual worms. who eat books) to transport people into works of literature. For example, right now his wife is lost in a Wordsworth poem. Enter Acheron Hades, whose villainy knows no bounds. He's learned that if you enter the manuscript of a book and make changes, those changes go out to every copy of the book ever created. Hades kidnaps Thursday's uncle and uses his machine to hold Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit hostage. After that plot fails, he decides to go after one of the most beloved books in all of literature, Jane Eyre.
Review: It had so much promise! Who wouldn't want to read a book with literary detectives, time travel, and the ability to travel into books?! But oh my god, it was bad. Let's start with the setting: Thursday Next's world is weird and not in a god way. It's England, but alternate history, but set in the modern day, but not really, with vampires and genetic splicing, but everything else is normal, but the Crimean war has been going on for 100 years...you get where I'm going with this, it's just too much. It reminded me of Terry Pratchett, but on a really off day.
The characters left much to be desired as well. Thursday was one of the few fully fleshed out characters, yet her whole focus was on things that happened 10 years ago. Get over it, girl. She has the potential of being a really strong female character, but she ends up being just a stereotype. The other characters were just as bad. Acheron Hades (because of course you'd name your villain after 2 gods of hell) doesn't have any motivation other than being a pain in the side of the police. He doesn't seem evil, just bored. Everyone else, including the man Thursday left behind and yet can't stop think about, were instantly forgettable.
I was all for giving this book 1.5 stars until the point that Thursday went into Jane Eyre. Then the book really picked up and the plot got interesting, it's just a shame that it waited until the last 50 pages to do so. This book was a waste of my time. Skip it.
