First Among Sequels

It is hard to read a book that is in a series of books, especially if it is the fifth in the series… I couldn’t get my hands on the first, so as I tell the RAs, when you give me a “favorite series” and not a particular book… I get to choose one… for this series, Thursday Next (by author Jasper Fforde), I read First Among Sequels.  The concept of the book is actually pretty interesting, a futuristic/fantasy tale of an undercover special agent who works for an agency in the special operations network department for the Chronoguard, which tries to safeguard literature, yes the books that we all love to read (like the RAs at NYU).   In this world, characters in books can enter and leave the world of their book and come into “modern life” – can you say time traveling?  Throughout the series it appears, as the RA who loved it explained to me, there are many great novels that Thursday, the protagonist and from a long line of special ops agents, gets involved in changing endings, battling with characters from the books who escape into the real world, or even when agents get stuck in a story and can’t escape the book.   Literature in the Thursday Next series is much more popular than it is in our world (can you say NetFlix? Direct TV, and/or HBO to Go?).  In the world of the fiction books there is a “police force” called Jurisfiction, that ensures that the books continue to read as they should, to be enjoyed, and sometimes the two groups clash, or even have others who try and destroy the book investigated by the special ops team.  Throw into the story the fact that Thursday and other special agents can also develop a “mirror” image of themselves in this world of fiction and you have the beginnings of a complicated series of devious plots that make for some interesting plots.   In this particular story, Thursday has a mirror image, Thursday Next 5, and yes the Thursday Next 1-4 also come back, as a way to try and erase the real Thursday Next from the world of fiction (and the real world).  The book also has many other characters from previous books (so having read the first four is actually necessary) to understand all of the particulars, and catch some of the humor as well.  In this story Thursday is trying to save the special ops unit and tries to get her son to join the Chronoguard but there are numerous fakes, sting operations, and other “blockers” from having Thursday attempt this safeguard.  In the end Thursday has her major battle with her nemesis from a previous book Thursday1-4 who battle it out in the middle of a fiction story for life and death.  Who will live??  It is certainly a cliffhanger, leading to the next book I’m sure (yes, sorry to ruin it for you… but you had to guess that in book five of seven, there was more to come).  Love the concept, some of the humor was above, or bellow, my taste.  Maybe it is the British thing?  Next time I will need to find the first in the series and not the 5^th.  I’d pass on this one, but not the first one from what I could see.   A lot less jumping into novels in this edition and I would have loved to be in the midst of conflict among characters entering Pride and Prejudice and other greats!