The Great Troll War

2.5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
The Great Shandar, amoral magician, has set a seemingly endless horde of trolls against what's left of the UnUnited Kingdoms for mysterious reasons of his own, and only Jennifer Strange, Court Mystician, can same the country.

Review
I've enjoyed many of Jasper Fforde's books, starting with the Thursday Next series, though there are certainly peaks and valleys in his work. I liked the first three books of this series quite a bit, and looked forward to this last one. Unfortunately, it seems to me that Fforde dropped the ball here. Either he sleepwalked through it or lost interest in the series entirely. While there are attempts at humor, none of them really land because it feels so little effort has gone into setting up them or the characters. Jennifer Strange, a compelling, fun character in the earlier books, here feels tired and disinterested.

It's perhaps a case of the cover accurately depicting the book – dropping the earlier colorful fun style, the publisher here went for something quite different and, let's say... basic. It's a cover that screams out, “We've put very little effort into this book.” Unfortunately, that's true of the author as well.

The book has lots of footnotes, some of which might have been funny, but most of which exist to promote the earlier books. There's also a cameo by the author himself, but it comes off just as wooden as the rest of the book.

All in all, I think most people would be best served by stopping with the prior book. This book doesn't add anything you need to know, and it has a pretty unsatisfactory ending. A real letdown for a good series. I wish Fforde would realize that he's not really great at extended series. Certainly he seemed to have lost interest in this one.