I resisted reading this book for quite awhile, but thankfully, my friend Lisa (LisaVegan), kept bugging me about it! I thought that I would not appreciate it as I have never read Jane Eyre. But, Lisa is right, you do not have to know anything about Jane Eyre to understand this book.

I am thankful to Lisa, and to Goodreads, because I probably would have never stumbled upon this delightful book otherwise, as I rarely visit the SF shelves at the library.

I only found one annoyance while reading--"their" is used at one point where it should have been "there". (p. 272 in my copy) That there was only this one annoyance is rather good, as I am finding more and more misspelled and misused words nowadays. (I blame computer spell-check!)

This book is full of tongue-in-cheek references (characters named Braxton Hicks, Runcible Spoon,and Mycroft for example.) The book also takes place in an alternate universe where the Crimean War is still being fought, and there are special operatives such as the Chrono-guard and the Literary Detectives as well as others. It is definitely a fun read!


Two of my favorite parts (that are NOT spoilers):

1. The first is the scene where two of the main characters, Thursday Next and Landon Parke-Laine attend a showing of the play of Richard III that is reminiscent of Rocky Horror Picture Show with the audience shouting lines at the actors. (Example: the audience shouts "When is the winter of our discontent?" just before the actor playing Richard intones "Now is the winter of our discontent.")

2. The second part that I enjoyed immensely is a chapter heading (for chapter 20) that purportedly is an excerpt from an article written by Mycroft Next in the New Splicer magazine:
"...Several people have asked me where I find the large quantity of prepositions that I need to keep my Bookworms fit and well. The answer is, of course, that I use omitted prepositions, of which, when mixed with dropped definite articles make a nourishing food. There are a superabundance of these in the English language. Journey's End, for instance, has one omitted preposition and two definite articles: the end of the journey. There are many other examples, too, such as bedside (the side of the bed) and streetcorner (the corner of the street), and so forth. If I run short I head to my local newspapers, where omitted prepositions can be found in The Toad's headlines every day. As for the worm's waste products, these are chiefly composed of apostrophes--something that is becoming a problem--I saw a notice yesterday that read: Cauliflower's, three shilling's each..."

This particularly gave me a laugh, as I feel that the bookworms must be active in our world as well--I have been much perturbed at the frequent usage of misplaced apostrophes.

There are many more parts of the book that are noteworthy. This is a very fun read, and I look forward to reading the next books in the series, as well as his nursery rhyme series.