Review: Eyre Affair

Author: Jasper Fforde

Title: The Eyre Affair

Description: This is a steampunky mystery about literature, so if that doesn’t cover all your bases, you’re too hard to please. Thursday Next is a literary detective in a world where literature affects the “real” world, where time travel is pretty commonplace (in fact, her father only blips in from his time travels on rare occasions), and where the world’s most vicious criminal has just stolen the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit.  

Review source: This was my choice for our book group read.

Plot: I thought the plot was a bit busy, but that may be because the book is the first in a series. Either way, too many genres converging can get a little overwhelming.

Characters: Fforde is writing everything with his tongue in his cheek, so characters have silly (and sometimes scatological) names, and of course, people with silly names can’t be taken seriously, can they?

Writing style: More steampunky science fiction than mysterious, but the mystery conventions are there too. And humor spread over it all. Imagine Douglas Adams with more genres and a female protagonist.

Audience: As I said, if you’re not covered by one of the genres in this book, well, I guess you’ll pick it up because it’s literary fiction. (ha!)

Wrap-up: The book was probably a little too silly for my taste (i.e. I won’t be seeking out the next title in the series), but it was ok for something different. 3/5*