The Eyre Affair

Such a mixed bag for me. I loved it at first - the world felt delightfully whimsical, fun, clever, and bursting with promise. A secret agent solving crimes against literature in a setting where dodos still exist and Wales is a separate socialist republic. How could this be boring?

Quite easily, it turns out. Before the halfway point, the novelty wore off for me. It becomes quickly apparent that Thursday Next is a charmless character to be stuck with in first-person, which Fforde seems to realise because he ditches her off for third-person at jarring intervals. She gets a bland, tacked-on romance subplot, of course. There's very little characterisation for anyone else beyond having joke names that get old fast. The dialogue is functional at best and conspicuously rubbish at worst. Despite all the colourful meta potential, a lot of the story and writing comes off as oddly po-faced and boring.

I really expected more craft and wit from a book whose whole schtick hinges on the literary, but the execution fails to live up to the lofty premise. Maybe the series gets better, but I'm not rushing to find out.