One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing by Jasper Fforde
Viking, 2011
359 pages
Fiction
5/5 stars
Sixth in the Thursday Next series

Source: Won an ARC through firstreads.

Wow! This was such a delightful book.  While I was at first disappointed to discover that another Thursday book was coming (not because I don't like Thursday but because I'm dying for the second Shades of Grey book), I ended up adoring this book.

Here is a list of some of the awesome parts of it:
-A robot butler named Sprockett; I now desperately want one of my own
-An imminent genre war (between Racy Novel and WomFic)
-Worries about the rise of e-books and what that means for reading
-Quirky references to the giants of English literature
-Literary allusions and jokes that are aimed right at bookish people (aka me and you since you're reading a book blog)
-Multiple Thursday Nexts (really too many to count)

Now the basic plot of the book is contained in the title.  A Thursday Next is missing; sadly it is the real Thursday and thus the written Thursday has to step in to take her place and hunt her down.  She must do this while juggling a new understudy, a sadly little-read series, and those who want her dead.  Written Thursday also struggles with her desire for Landon, a character not in her books, and later the feeling that she might be the real Thursday.  She also has peace talks, a cheese smuggling ring, the ever present evil corporation Goliath, and various plots needing her attention.  Luckily she has the aid of my new favorite character Sprockett, the aforementioned butler and her own keen wits.

In order to solve the mystery, she visits many of the genres in BookWorld.  She of course lives in fantasy but ventures to Self-Published, Fan-Fiction, Crime (Conspiracy), Romance, and a bit of Comedy.  While the plot is frequently fantastical, it is also pretty easy to follow especially if you allow yourself to relax in the hands of a brilliant writer and are familiar with the other books.

Like all of the Thursday novels, this is a love letter to books set almost entirely in BookWorld and it is a delight from start to finish.  Highly recommended (although you should read the series in order).