Of the first three books in the Thursday Next Series, Lost in a Good Book is the best. Thursday Next's new husband, Landen, has been eradicated by the evil Goliath Corporation: they went back in time and changed things so that Landen never even existed. In order to get Landen back, Thursday needs to free Jack Schitt, a Goliath executive. She also has to deal with an allegedly new Shakespeare play, and a potentially apocalyptic collection of pink goo.

Everything that made The Eyre Affair so fun has been improved. The action is zanier. The allusions are more clever. Spike is even more hilarious. It's true that the story doesn't make much sense, but then Fforde has never claimed to be writing a coherent narrative. Instead, Lost in a Good Book enrichens the madcap universe that Thursday lives in--an impressive feat, given the unsurpassed inventiveness of Fforde's first book.

Lost in a Good Book also has surprising emotional heft. I'm not talking about Thursday's grief over Landen's eradication--sometimes her mooning is a little melodramatic. But the book certainly starts in a surprisingly nasty way that lays the book's emotional groundwork; and the subplot concerning Thursday's father is a moving little aside in an otherwise comic adventure.

Copyright © 2004 Steven Wu