Product Description
The popularity of Jasper Fforde’s one-of-a-kind series builds with each new book. Now in the fourth installment, the resourceful literary detective Thursday Next returns to Swindon from the BookWorld accompanied by her son Friday and none other than the dithering Hamlet. But returning to SpecOps is no snap—as outlaw fictioner Yorrick Kaine plots for absolute power, the return of Swindon’s patron saint foretells doom, and, if that isn’t bad enough, The Merry Wives of Windsor is becoming entangled with Hamlet. Can Thursday find a Shakespeare clone to stop this hostile takeover? Can she vanquish Kaine and prevent the world from plunging into war? And will she ever find reliable child care? Find out in this totally original, action-packed romp, sure to be another escapist thrill for Jasper Fforde’s legions of fans.
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 I Can't Handle It ( meyersd@greenville.k12.mi.us )
It was only after I had engaged that author that I realized this was the fourth in a loosly connected series. I am not sure, however, that reading the priors were necessary. I just could not get into the text. It took so much work to sort out what was happening, I gave up. Some called the book funny, I called it redicuous. It's not my genre and maybe my mood was too serious, but it seemed a confusing waste of time to me.
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 Lewd Saints, High-Stakes Croquet, and Hamlet ( muzyka )
Like all of Jasper Fforde's books, Something Rotten combines literary allusion, alternate history and science fiction in a seamless narrative. In this installment of Fforde's Thursday Next series, Ms. Next, a real person who has spent the last several years living inside of books and leading the BookWorld's police force, Jurisfiction, returns to the real world to get back her husband, Landen. In a bizarre twist of circumstances that Thursday herself can't understand, the time-traveling police force known as the ChronoGuard has eradicated Landen by changing history at the moment that would have been his conception. The only evidence of his existence is Thursday's memory of the life she had with him in an alternate past, and the paradoxical existence of Friday, Thursday and Landen's infant son.
Other matters also preoccupy Thursday upon her return to the real world. Hamlet has also left the BookWorld temporarily and starts to think about rewriting his play. Thursday's old nemesis the Goliath Corporation is, for some reason, trying to convert itself into a religion. Worst of all, Yorrick Kaine, the Chancellor of England, has won the mindless devotion of the whole country and seeks to become absolute dictator. Thursday must fulfill the prophesy of a resurrected thirteenth-century monk to prevent Kaine from seizing power and starting a war that destroys the world.
Like all of Fforde's books, Something Rotten piques my interest in classics I haven't read yet and refreshes my memory of English class discussions about ones I have. This installment of the series brought to mind discussions of Hamlet with one of my favorite high school teachers, and it provided an entertaining reminder of the play's principle themes. When characters try to change their own stories, it's fun to recall the original version and how it differs. I also find myself looking up place names on maps to see how the locations in Fforde's universe, with its alternate history, match up with real-life ones.
I also loved the book's humor. Memorable examples include Fforde's description of a high-stakes croquet game, which uses a tea party on the lawn and an Italian sunken garden as obstructions and hazards. Another favorite of mine was the way the narrator of the audiobook pronounced the obscene Old English of the resurrected monk Saint Zvlkx.
I recommend this book for people who enjoy humor, alternate history, or a lighthearted exploration of classic literature.
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 About as good as Harry Potter ( repeat_customer )
This is the fourth book in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. I liked all of them. They provide a similar kind of escapism, magic and drama as Harry Potter books, but there is also a lot of original humor.
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My summer vacation in Thursday Next novels
While completing undergrad and law school, I had no time to read for fun. In the period between graduation and taking the Bar, I needed brain candy that was substantial enough to chew on, yet satisfingly low on nutritional value. The Next novels were the perfect solution for my summer vacation! Be sure to bring your towel when you read this, bookjumping is almost as challenging as hitching a flight to Zenobia.
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Amusing Book -- Great Literary/British Humor
Unlike just about everyone else -- I actually read this book *without* reading the other ones in the series.
Even with that I give this book 5 stars.
Now it doesn't rise to the level of Douglas Adams knock down drag out farce, but it clearly has elements of the dryer wit of writers like Adams or Robert Aspirin (of the Myth-- series).
In short (though the other reviews do a better plot synopsis) Fforde's universe it set in a world, where not only time is fluid (as the Chronoguard can jump back and forth and "fix" history) but also the boundry between fact and fiction -- as characters can jump from the fictional world into the real world, as well as between books.
Fforde's world is one where items tend to be subltly different than reality -- likely because of all that mucking about in history that has gone on and the world is bureaucratic to the point of lunacy.
Also a 2 year old that only speaks "Loren Ipsum" is a wonderful touch.
Great for anyone who likes British humor or literary humor. The story is less important than the world that is spun along the way.
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