The first in a series of novels about Thursday Next, literary detective, this is a highly entertaining novel about other novels and being caught inside a story. The world of Thursday Next is sort of like our world of 1985 only with many things altered: Britain is engaged in a desperate war against the Soviet on the Crimean. People can travel through time and so on.
The good thing is that we get to know the world slowly, rather than having an extensive info-dump in the beginning of the novel. This makes for a far better read and some fun surprises.The story deals with a device that can make people enter books and change the story by killing characters or being seen in the right places. As a literary detective Next’s job is to discover frauds of classic stories in a world in love with literature. People take names after canonised writers such as Marlowe, Milton and so on, but when famous books are suddenly altered, Next needs to defeat Acheron Hades.
No holds barred, this is a hilarious novel.