When Starbucks tries to open another coffee shop-it's 17th-within the
pages of the Hardy Boys series, Thursday Next cracks down. She's the
literary detective keeping the peace in this fourth installment of
Fforde's hyper-imaginative sci-fi comedy series set in an England where
everybody is jumping in and out of books. Facing off against an evil
"escaped fictionaut" named Yorrick Kaine, Next must find a cloned
Shakespeare, pronto (or else Hamlet is lost forever), and help the good
guys win a climactic match of a Quidditch-y game called SuperHoop (or else
thermonuclear war ensues). Fforde has churned this quartet of books out
at a clip-the first, The Eyre Affair, hit in 2002-and the essential
one-jokeness of the premise is starting to show. But he compensates with
enough furious daft invention to sate his cult fan base.
|
