So just a quick warning – this is the 2nd Thursday Next book, so if you haven’t read The Eyre Affair (click for my review) this might be a little bit spoiler-y.
Now if you did click above for my review of The Eyre Affair, you’ll see that I gave it 4 stars. In hindsight, I probably should have given it 3 or 3.5 stars. I found the first book a little jarring, and didn’t connect as much with Thursday Next as I could of. I actually liked Hades, the bad guy, the most in the first book.
The second book, Lost in a Good Book, is a big improvement. Thursday and Landen are enjoying their newlywed status, and Thursday is still attracting a bit of fame due to her adventures in Jane Eyre and defeating Hades. But stuff quickly goes to crap when the Goliath Corporation makes Landen disappear to blackmail her, and she’s literally almost killed by coincidences. Thursday ends up joining the Jurisfiction team – the police force inside of books and learning to navigate the literary world. While trying to save Landen, she’s diving in and out of different books, trying to authenticate a newly resurfaced Shakespeare play, and trying to save the world from being overcome by a mysterious pink goo.
I found this book way easier to get into – maybe because I knew what to expect, having read the first book. The story starts right away, and you get to spend a lot more time with Thursday as she learns how to book-jump and meets various different literary characters. I love how the whole idea of book-jumping is explored much more thoroughly, and the other cool peeks we get into this alternative-reality 1980′s Britain. Wooly mammoths are alive and migrating around, Neanderthals are back and treated like animals, people travel via a tube running through the center of the Earth - it’s all very cool. My only disappointment is that we don’t see much of her partner Bowden, who I really liked in the first book.
On top of all that, this book ends like a sequel and makes me want to hurry and try to read the next book, The Well of Lost Plots, sooner rather than later. The first book ended like it could have been a stand-alone novel – this book ends on the brink of the next adventure for Thursday, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how her journey goes.
Sarah Says: 4.5 stars
