The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

[lightreads]

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A Thursday Next spin-off about Jack Spratt, chief of the Nursery Crime Division, with all the meta and absurdity you'd expect when the first book is about the murder of Humpty Dumpty (he fell off a wall, you know).

Fun, if a bit too breaking the fourth wall sometimes, which is also my problem with Thursday Next. And Fforde gets caught here in his own meta cleverness. He's deconstructing mysteries, so yes you make the repeated joke about the sidekick being boring and having no particular personality. Which is fine, except that she's boring and has no particular personality.

But the thing about Jasper Fforde is that no one else does what he does, and what he does is fundamentally cool.

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Comments

[readerjane]

I'd like to see lots of authors doing what Fforde does. 'Cause then we'd have competition, and literary darwinism, and eventually someone who does it so well he'd blow our socks off.

In the meantime, Fforde is fun.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I followed him up with Pratchett, because it's like they're doing things in the same genus, though not the same species. (I totally did the nmemonic 'kinky people come over for great sex' in my head right there to remember what comes above species).

[readerjane]

kinky people co....

OOOH! Mnemonic! And such a good one, *snerk*

(Files away for later inappropriate laughter)

[insptr-penguin.livejournal.com]

They made a Jack Sprat spinoff? I'm just getting to know him in The Well of Lost Plots and he doesn't have enough personality there yet to support a spinoff. I'm hoping he develops one before then.

[lightreads.livejournal.com]

Actually, he's pretty interesting. And it's sort of a spin-off. It's all very unclear, but I think you'll like them.