The year is 2002. Thursday Next and her husband Landen Parke-Laine are raising their three (or possibly two) children, and life has returned to normal (mostly.) SpecOps has been shut down, but thanks to Thursday it's now being run secretly out of Acme Carpets. And Thursday is once again a Jurisfiction agent, this time training a very special new agent—Thursday Next.
Along with Thursday's rise to fame (due to both the Eyre Affair and the 1989 Super Hoop) came a Thursday Next book series. Now the fictional Thursday is being trained by the real Thursday—or, at least, one of them is. There are actually two fictional Thursdays—a foul-mouthed violent one known as Thursday1-4, the heroine of the first four books in the series, and the toned-down hippy-dippy Thursday5 of the fifth book. But Thursday1-4 failed her Jurisfiction exam and it looks like Thursday5 is going to do so as well.
Meanwhile ReadRates in the real world have been dropping due to vastly shortened attention spans and the council of Genres is coming up with some alarming schemes to increase them—mostly involving reality TV. And teenager Friday is an unmotivated slob who sleeps in late while he should be out fulfilling his calling as the greatest ever member of the time-travelling ChronoGuard.
To make matters worse, it looks like time travel hasn't even been invented after all, which means the end of time could start unraveling until time as we know it is gone forever.
All this and more in store for Thursday Next in First Among Sequels. While this fifth installment remains as frenetic and whimsical as the previous books, it also happens to be the weakest in the series. It's a bit unevenly paced, and tends to get bogged down in mildly interesting but ultimately unnecessary exposition.
It does have some gems of moments—for example, a clever explanation of the reason behind modern shortened attention spans, and the scandalous idea of turning classics into reality TV. As always the world of Thursday Next delivers all the hilarity and absurdity that readers expect, but this time lacking just a bit in the freshness and sparkle of the previous books.
 |
Review by Lauren Shearer
Lauren Shearer writes words for fun and profit. She also makes films, but everyone knows you can't make a profit doing that. Her other hobby is consistently volunteering way too much of her time. You can read more of her reviews here.
|
Review by Lauren Shearer
Lauren Shearer writes words for fun and profit. She also makes films, but everyone knows you can't make a profit doing that. Her other hobby is consistently volunteering way too much of her time. You can read more of her reviews
here.
Did you find this review helpful?