Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog
It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.
Currently reading
Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde
Volume 4 in the adventures of Thursday Next, Literary Detective, is much like its immediate predecessor in terms of strengths and weaknesses alike.
There are the same issues with plotting, namely Deus ex Machina, lack of agency in events (specifically, very little seems to happen because of Thursday's actions) and a feeling of there being more of a collection of sub-plots without any one of them being an obvious over-all plot until late on.
The strengths are the absurdist, surrealist humour and imagination. It surprised me to find that I enjoyed Fforde's alternative 1988 more than the BookWorld setting of the previous volume.
There has, through-out the series, been an obvious subtext of protest at heavy handed big business and its political influence and that comes very much to the fore in this book. It might resonate with people experiencing the changes at Goodreads right now but it's not subtle and doesn't offer much in terms of methods for ordinary people to challenge such power.
I'm not really in a hurry to read any further in this series. I'd pick one up if I'm desperate for lightweight entertainment and nothing obviously better is too hand.
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