I suppose after two very good novels, Jasper Fforde had to stumble at least once. For reasons I can only vaguely explain, The Well of Lost Plots, despite being chock full of Fforde's trademark literary antics, just didn't do it for me.

As Well begins, literary detective Thursday Next has been placed in a sort of witness protection program for her own protection. That would be Jurisfiction's Character Exchange Program, which takes real people and substitutes them for fictional characters so that the fictional characters can take a vacation from their dull, scripted lives. Thursday gets thrown into a truly godawful police procedural as the female sidekick to the detective hero. Simultaneously, Jurisfiction is preparing for the release of UltraWord, the new "operating system" for fiction that guarantees an enhanced reading experience for everybody. And, lest anybody forget, Aornis Hades--sister of the Hades that were handily dispatched in the first two novels--is messing with Thursday's memories of Landen, erasing them one by one.

Let's get the good out of the way first. Well still sports some achingly funny sequences. The chapter where UltraWord is "unveiled" is absolutely hilarious, a very British sequence of people misunderstanding each other and talking over one another, all overlaid with the basic incongruity of people discussing literature as though it were some kind of technical product. The therapy session (i.e., "rage counselling") with Heathcliff and the cast of Wuthering Heights is a parody both of counselling and of the overwrought melodrama of that (fabulous) book; the violent ending of the therapy session (due to "ProCath" terrorists) is also a hoot. And finally, Fforde later engages in an inspired round of "had had" and "that that" nonsense, which I reproduce almost in full:

'Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren't you working on this?'

Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts. . . . 'It's mostly an unlicensed usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty-three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim's Progress may also be a problem owing to its had had / that that ratio.'

'So what's the problem in Progress?'

'That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked but not if the number exceeds that that that usage.'

'Hmm,' said the Bellman. 'I thought had had had had TGC's approval for use in Dickens? What's the problem?'

'Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example,' explained Lady Cavendish. 'You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not.'

'So the problem with that other that that was that--?

'That that other--other that that had had approval.'

'Okay,' said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, 'let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim's Progress, which had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC's approval?'

There was a very long pause.

'Right,' said the Bellman with a sigh.

Unfortunately, aside from these high spots, Well can be pretty slow. The fictional world that Thursday lives in for most of the book is, frankly, boring--strangely, it lacks the wacky inventiveness of Thursday's "real" world, with its melange of time travel, dirigibles, and formerly extinct dodos. The plot this time around seems even more pointless and aimless than usual, in large part because the driving mystery of the novel is introduced so late as to be almost irrelevant. Aornis is a creepy villain--but she's also one that we've seen in each of the last two volumes; in a very literal sense, she's "just another Hades," and her cackling evil nature feels recycled. And finally, the ending of the novel, while at times both giddy and fun, is also a whale of a deus ex machina, which Fforde almost, but not quite, pulls off. The problem is that we know Fforde doesn't need to close his books with randomness, given the surprising emotional heft at the end of his previous book; that he does so here is disappointing.

Don't get me wrong: I'm still looking forward to Fforde's next Thursday Next novel, which is based in part on Hamlet. I just wish this third book had fully lived up to the promise of its predecessors.

Copyright © 2004 Steven Wu