Lost in a Good Book

I read the first book of this series almost eight years ago, and every once in a while I thought about reading the following books, and reading something about Fforde (probably on Goodreads) pushed me to get this from the library. I remember very little from the first book aside from the general world in which the story takes place, but that didn't really influence my enjoyment of this one.

I was having a pretty good time until, about two-thirds through, the narrator describes Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility as “dressed in a Victorian dress, bonnet and shawl.” That a book like this could possibly mistake Jane Austen as Victorian is kind of the worst insult for a reader like me. Interpreting Jane Austen as Victorian means you don't understand Jane Austen or the Victorian era. At first I thought it was purposeful, that the Jane Austen of the book's world is not the same as Jane Austen in this world, but nothing in the text pointed to that. This series puts forward a world where books (at least books by British writers) are revered and protected, but then they make an elementary mistake about one of the greatest English writers of all time? I took away a whole star and a half for that.

Otherwise, the story is not bad and the world is a really interesting place with a handful of really clever things happening. It even reminded me of Douglas Adams, but less clever, less funny, and less absurd. Strangely, the end of the book – and I remember that this happened to me with the first book too – seemed pretty lame and too conventional for the rest of the book. Maybe it's because it's a series or maybe I just don't like the way most books end in general or whatever, but in any case I'm not terribly interested in picking up the next one. Maybe in another eight years.