Satan Reviews- Books: The Eyre Affair

The Eyre Affair

Jasper Fforde

Penguin Books

Warnings: Spoilers, the phrase 'to be honest', the word 'like', strike text



I actually enjoyed this book, but I probably won't read it again because there are some things I didn't like and it's a little bit overrated.

The names are utterly ridiculous. Thursday Next, I'll go with. It's meant to be a joke, but I'm crossing the line at the rest of her family. Joffy, Wednesday, Polly, Mycroft and Anton- silly names, especially when put with the last name Next. I find it worrying that Thursday has no idea what her dad's called. Did her mum never mention it, ever? Aren't your parents' names just something people know for no reason?
Jack Schitt was a joke that took me too long to get- admittedly it was late at night and I was tired. But we can all agree he was an over-used stereotype that we get in every novel about spy agencies and the like douche bag

Also the villain decided he had to be evil because his name was Acheron Hades- Hades being god of the underworld in Greek mythology and Acheron is a river in the underworld in Greek mythology. That's like saying all people called Kris/ Chris or have the last name Kringle want to give presents to children. Although I did like Acheron (even if he was a bit OTT as a villain) because he was one of the funnier characters.

I shipped Jane Eyre and Thursday more than I shipped Thursday and Landen. He was annoying, plus their entire romance was wishy-washy and came up when Thursday should have been thinking of other things. Just let the bad guy escape and you could lose your job, but what about your ex-fiance???? To be honest, by the end of the novel I wanted her to either be single or with Bowden because he at least wasn't hot and cold with his affections or even end up with Acheron (I really wasn't a fan of Landen.

The build up was kinda slow and some sections felt slightly like an information dump, but then everything happened really quickly at the end and to be honest I'm pretty sure Thursday would have been fired due to her actions. It was mentioned like twice or something that she had broken many protocols and in other circumstances she would have been fired. How would any of the stuff Thursday did happen in different circumstances??????

Although, I liked the extracts from books from that universe at the beginning of every chapter- even if they contained spoilers. It broke up the chapters nicely and showed that the author had put some thought into the universe that the novel is set (apart from the word soccer, everyone in Britain says football for God's sake).

Overall, the book was good. It mostly flowed well (if very, very slowly) and the characters were okay if a little cliche and stereotypical. To be honest, the best part of the novel= dodos. That is all.

I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars.