Book Review | The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

There is another 1985, where London's criminal gangs have moved into the lucrative literary market, and Thursday Next is on the trail of the new crime wave's Mr Big.

Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.

Thursday sets out to find a way into the book to repair the damage. But solving crimes against literature isn't easy when you also have to find time to halt the Crimean War, persuade the man you love to marry you, and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

Perhaps today just isn't going to be Thursday's day. Join her on a truly breathtaking adventure, and find out for yourself. Fiction will never be the same again...

Review

Bizarre. I think that's the best word to describe, not only this book, but Jasper Fforde's writing style in general. Of course, I mean this is the best possible sense of the word bizarre. I love this style of writing, and the exciting and downright random stories it creates.

I've read one previous novel by Fforde (Shades of Grey) and I loved it. So I knew that I definitely wanted to read more. This was a natural choice for me, because Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels of all time, and I love reading books that play on characters/stories from other novels.

I went into this book excitedly, with high hopes and eager anticipation of excellent writing and wonderful characters. 

This is what you get in this book. The writing style is absolutely fantastic. It pulls you into a quirky world, that you can't help but fall in love with. It introduces you to characters, who are amazingly written, developed nicely, and that you actually care what happens to them.

One of the other great things about this book, is that it's exciting. There was enough going on, that it kept me eagerly flipping through the pages, and wanting more.

Honestly, the only reason this book didn't make it to a top rating for me, is that I would have liked to of seen a little more Jane Eyre for a book called The Eyre Affarid. As it stood, the story with Jane didn't start until pretty late in the novel. That is the only thing that knocked any point off for me though.

All in all, this is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it.