Sonderbooks Book Review of Something Rotten

Reviewed April 22, 2005.
Viking, New York, 2004. 385 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (F FFO).
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2005 (#1, Science Fiction)

Something Rotten is the fourth story of the adventures of Thursday Next, Literary Detective. In this book, Thursday comes out of her refuge in the Well of Lost Plots and the Book World. Her son Friday is two years old, and she feels it’s time she worked at undoing the eradication of her husband, Friday’s father.

Things have changed while Thursday was out of the real world. The Goliath Corporation is now seeking to become a religion, and Yorrick Kaine, a fictional character who has escaped from some unknown book, is poised to take over the government. He is blaming all the country’s problems on Denmark. This causes some problems for Thursday, since she brought Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, out of the Book World, while she tries to sort out his play. (The other characters are trying to take over.)

Meanwhile, Thursday must deal with assassination attempts and the knowledge that if the miserable croquet team from Swindon doesn’t win the Super Hoop, the world will end. Somehow, she ends up managing and playing on the team herself….

Jasper Fforde’s books defy attempts to place them in any genre. There is time travel, alternate history, and entering books, so science fiction seems closest. Mixed in we have abundant cleverness, humor, literary allusions, and a dash of adventure. One thing’s for certain: Watching the intrepid Thursday Next in action is abundantly entertaining.

Reviews of other books by Jasper Fforde:
The Eyre Affair (#1)
Lost in a Good Book (#2)
The Well of Lost Plots (#3)
One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (#6)
The Big Over Easy
The Fourth Bear
Shades of Grey
The Last Dragonslayer
The Song of the Quarkbeast
The Eye of Zoltar

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

*****Something Rotten*

A Thursday Next Novel

by Jasper Fforde