The Well of Lost Plots

Jasper Fforde

Thursday Next's husband Landen has been wiped out of memory of almost everyone but her. The Schitz family changed time and had him die before they ever met. Yet Thursday remembers. Also, she is pregnant with his baby. Now she is the object of more than one vendetta. Thursday needs to get away and regroup. She hides away in the Character Exchange Program and hides in an obscure story in the Well of Lost Plots.

She studies with Miss Haversham to become a Jurisfiction agent, one of the few Outlanders to do so. But Aornis Hades has left a small gift in Thursday's mind - a memory worm that eats away memories. Landen is slipping out of her memory. Her grandmother joins her to help her remember Landen.

Something is going on in Book World. Someone is killing off the major Jurisfiction Agents. The Annual Book Awards Dinner is soon. Ultra Word is due to have the upgrade released shortly. The Minotaur has gotten loose. Thursday has two generic characters living with her who are trying to grow into real characters. And Thursday keeps changing the novel she is living in, Caversham Heights. With enough changes they may get out of the Well of Lost Plots and into Book World.

The Well of Lost Plots is the third Thursday Next novel. Book World has a wealth of fun places and things, like the mispeling vyrus, the Text Sea, grammarsites, and group meetings for the characters from Wuthering Heights. It's not a fast paced and is not as enthralling as the first two books are. The word games are there, both overt and subtle. The Nursery Rhyme Characters are picketing. Caversham Heights stars the characters who ultimately get published in The Big Over Easy.

The mystery is twisting, the writing is average. If you haven't read of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books, don't start with this one. I kept putting it down, then not minding when I couldn't get back to it for a couple days. By the end I was pulled back in, but I found the middle slow.

The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
First Among Sequels
One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
The Woman Who Died a Lot