I'm currently in the middle of the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, which is seven books in total, beginning with The Eyre Affair. I've just finished the fourth book, Something Rotten, and I am completely submersed in Fforde's wacky world of dodos, bookjumping and Gravitubes.
One of my favourite things about the series is the strong voice of the main character, Thursday Next. The book is told in the first person, so almost everything is seen through Thursday's eyes. There are occasions when a scene is narrated by somebody else, but the vast majority of the story is mediated through Thursday. You get a strong sense of her views and personality, and her tone and writing style are very witty and engaging. This was really proved to me when someone else briefly took over the narration and I immediately noticed the shift in style; a testament to how well Fforde has created Thursday's distinct narrative voice. Thursday is smart, plucky and a master of dry wit, but she also makes mistakes, often has no idea what she's doing and her life can be a bit of a mess. She is a well-rounded, interesting character who easily pulls you with her through the mad twists and turns of Fforde's plot.
You might be thinking that Thursday is not a very normal name for a woman. But in the world of The Eyre Affair, names such as Thursday Next, Braxton Hicks, and Victor Analogy are considered commonplace. In fact, upon meeting a man called John Smith, Thursday comments what an unusual name he has. The names are sometimes references to real-life people (e.g. the president of England George Formby), but are more often puns and jokes, such as the two spies Kannon and Phodder, and Jack Schitt, an unpleasant business executive. Part of the fun of reading is working out why a character's name is a joke - it took me ages to work out that "Landen Park-Laine", when spoken out loud, sounds like "London, Park Lane"!
In fact, the strangeness of the names is only the beginning of the weird and wonderful world of the Thursday Next series. The books are set in Swindon in 1985, but not our 1985, or our Swindon. In this world, jet planes are replaced by Gravitubes, pods which travel through the centre of the earth; dodos and Neanderthals can commonly be found wandering around, and time is not as fixed as you may think. Oh, and they don't have ducks. (It's never explained why.) Literature is deeply important to society: rival gangs fight over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, and people change their names to Anne Hathaway or Lord Byron to show their devotion. In fact, Thursday is an employee of the Special Operations (SpecOps) Literary Division, which hunts down illegitimate copies of classic books and polices all crimes related to literature. This is not the most unusual SpecOps division: SpecOps also deals with vampires and werewolves (Division 17), re-engineered extinct species such as dodos and Neanderthals (Division 13) and time itself (Division 12). The world is fantastically constructed; incredibly complex, but just about making enough sense to accept and move on.
The biggest power in Thursday's world is the sinister Goliath Corporation Inc., which employs over a million people and sells all manner of things: their company slogan is "From Cots to Coffin". This was probably topical in 2001, when The Eyre Affair first came out, but is even more relevant now, with the "Meta-Verse" on the horizon and Amazon expanding into every possible market. As well as this, Thursday's world is hilariously over-sponsored and practically everything is copyrighted. Alongside Goliath, the TOAST marketing board holds a lot of power (their slogan: Eat More Toast.); they even buy up the wisdom of the 13th-century St Zvlkx. The incredibly corporate and bureaucratic society makes for some good jokes and little digs at modern consumer-driven society.
As the blurb for The Eyre Affair will tell you, the key to the whole plot of the series is Thursday's ability to enter fiction. In the first book, she has to go and rescue Jane Eyre, who has been kidnapped from her book and held ransom. I love this premise: it's so creative and original, while somewhat mind-bending. Many children (and adults) dream of being able to enter the world of fiction, and this dream can be lived out vicariously through Thursday's adventures in the BookWorld. As well as some of the action taking place inside classic fiction, the books are liberally sprinkled with jokes and references to famous books, making it very satisfying to read if you know your classics. (I only understood some of these references - it doesn't matter if they go over your head as it's never necessary to the plot). A handy guide to the British in-jokes and literary references can be found on Jasper Fforde's website.
I would thoroughly recommend this series to anybody and everybody; lovers of literature, especially classics, will especially enjoy it, while those with an interest in alternate history books and sci-fi will also find something to appreciate. And the books are really, really funny, tightly plotted and very readable. Go and dive into Thursday's crazy adventures - you won't regret it!