What I'm reading now...

What I'm reading now...

Jasper Fforde's Last Of The Dragonslayers trilogy

I am actually re-reading this trilogy, but it seemed like a good opportunity to say a few things about Jasper Fforde who is probably my favourite author of all time - or at least he ties with Terry Pratchett for that honour. There are many other writers and genres that I love, but when it comes to sheer entertainment value, Fforde is difficult to beat.

                    

If you haven't come across him before, his books are probably classified as 'comic fantasy' but in reality they are a genre unto themselves.  Start with the Thursday Next series - the first novel is called The Eyre Affair.  Its protagonist, the eponymous Thursday Next, is a literary detective in a wondrous parallel universe where writers are revered.  She discovers she has the ability to literally enter books, to step inside them and take part in the narrative, interacting with characters, etc.  As the novels progress, Fforde experiments with a range of fabulous ideas and we see Thursday at all ages, played by her 'fictional' selves, as an artificial life form, and travelling down different timelines.  It is endlessly inventive, funny and original. Some people find Fforde's use of often very silly puns in character's names (eg Thursday Next herself) to be irritating but I found I just got used to this very quickly and enjoyed them. He uses puns much less as the series progresses.  If you can open your mind and just go with the flow, you'll enjoy every minute.

He also wrote a couple of books referred to as 'The Nursery Crime Series': The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear.  Both are light-hearted and highly enjoyable, if also rather silly.  And he wrote Shades Of Grey, a novel not to be left beside your bed when you go on holiday and your mum stays at your house to look after your cat.  Catching sight of the title, she might mistake it for the infamous 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' and develop an entirely erroneous view of your sex life. I speak from experience.  

Shades of Grey is my favourite Fforde novel - it is quirky, eccentric, funny, tense and imaginative.  But it does lead me to the big problem in becoming a Fforde fan - he has long stretches of writers' block, or exhaustion, or whatever.  Unlike Pratchett, who seemed to do little else but churn out books and sign copies at conventions, Fforde has real problems with producing the novels.  I think this is because they are simply so wildly imaginative that he needs space to let his brain fill up again.  Douglas Adams once said that he had to wait for the ideas to arrive which led to long stretches without publication, and I guess Fforde is in the same situation.  Shades of Grey ends on a sort of cliff-hanger, and it's been hanging there since he published it a decade ago. He did say he was working on a prequel which would explain how the world he has created became like that, but it has yet to appear.

Last year, he published a stand-alone novel called Early Riser, which was excellent.  And his next novel is something about rabbits, I believe...

Anyway, The trilogy of novels beginning with The Last Dragonslayer (which was made into a film), continuing with The Song Of The Quarkbeast, and 'ending' with The Eye Of Zoltar (though again this ends on a massive cliffhanger so I'm hoping he plans on concluding the story with at least one more novel), are aimed at children.  There is a case to be made that all his novels are essentially children's books for grown-ups (like Terry Pratchett's), but this series is self-consciously aimed at a young audience.  However, they have the trademark Fforde inventiveness - just one fantastic idea after another.  They are funny, unexpected, completely silly but still maintaining a cohesive plot and characters you care about.  I have been re-reading The Eye Of Zoltar this week, and I'd forgotten how clever it is.  Jennifer Strange is the teenage heroine, who goes on a quest into the Cambrian Empire (basically mid-Wales) to search for a magical jewel called The Eye Of Zoltar. She meets the cannibalist Hotax tribe, huge cloud-leviathans (invisible flying cetaceans), tralfamosaurs (a kind of magically-created dinosaur), Boris-Johnson-esque idiot upper-class twits, a gifted-economist princess disguised as a handmaiden, life-suckers.  She sees her wizard boyfriend age ten years and her highly-intelligent pacifist dragon friend turn into a huge rubber ball.  I think you can grasp the idea from these examples - this book is full of absurd events, and they are frequently funny, but they are treated seriously so there is a genuine sense of jeopardy and tension alongside the ridiculous silliness.

If you like fantasy, humour and eccentricity, you'll love these books.  I have found that Fforde is a marmite writer - people either absolutely adore his books or just can't see the point. I know people in both camps, but the way I see it, those who can't see the point are truly missing out on a genuine treat.

Jasper Fforde's website: www.jasperfforde.com

RATING:

The Last Dragonslayer             The Song Of The Quarkbeast                   The Eye Of Zoltar

*****                              *****                     *****   

Key:

*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'

****         good - well worth taking the time to read

***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation

**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed

*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some                              other way