This one takes a different twist than the previous Thursday Next books (most recent one here*), in that it entirely features the fictional/BookWorld Thursday Next from the ghostwritten books about Thursday in their world. She's the one who's called a "tree-hugging hippie" compared to her sex-and-violence predecessor. She tries very hard to keep the books having a sense of personal integrity... which means that they're not getting read very much. The other characters in the book don't like her much, the dodo is a pain in the ass, and her understudy seems to have a goblin fetish. Written Thursday would love to be an awesome detective just like her progenitor (predecessor? original to her copy?), but she's kind of a washout. She also pines for Landen Parke-Laine because she's written that way, but she wasn't written with a husband in the series... which makes it a bit complicated for her to figure out dating anyone else.
Then Written Thursday starts to figure out that Original Recipe Thursday must be missing, both from the BookWorld and the RealWorld. She ends up with Real Thursday's Jurisfiction badge and starts sneaking around doing an investigation... one that clearly nobody thought she'd actually manage to solve. Her journey takes her all over the BookWorld, she acquires a robot butler, and she even gets real, all while on a giant search for the missing Thursday.
Following Written Thursday is an interesting journey, and one has to admire the author's ingenuity in continuing to write these books and the sheer wackiness that is the BookWorld. How he juggles it all, I don't know. But he kept my interest, and I enjoyed Written Thursday's journey to try to become a bit more (but not totally!) like the original.
Four stars.
Incidentally, while looking for the previous book to link to for this review, I reread it and I had mentioned that the previous book ended on a cliffhanger. It's been so long since I read this book that I didn't even remember that, and had to comb the Internet for a refresher. I gotta say... there's no serial killer plot in this book. Huh? Did the author forget that too?
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