I felt a little bereft after finishing Dark Reading Matter, the last Thursday Next adventure (as clearly stated on the cover). Which is daft, because it is all of fourteen years ago we got the last instalment in this series, The Woman Who Died a Lot. During that time, I managed just fine with rereading the previous Thursday novels. Only... this really is the end, isn't it?
I am happy to report to other Thursday fans that Dark Reading Matter is full of Ffordian zest and creativity. In The Woman Who Died a Lot, and even in the previous book in the series One of Our Thursdays is Missing, I thought I discerned some fatigue on the part of the author towards the fictional world he's created. Perhaps there's a reason One of Our Thursdays is narrated by the written Thursday, not the "real" one – it's as if Fforde didn't have a lot more to say about his heroine's life. In Dark Reading Matter, the fact that this is Thursday's last outing adds a certain sparkle to things. Although we still don't learn anything new about Thursday as a character. Fforde plainly loves her, but their association is over now.
This isn't the best book in the series in my opinion, but neither is is the worst. Having said that, which Thursday books you prefer is very much down to personal taste. My favourite things about the Thursday Next series are the BookWorld and the way Thursday interacts with various famous fictional characters. Favourite scenes from previous novels include the quick-thinking heroine getting out of a scrape in Kafka's The Trial, attending a rage therapy session in Wuthering Heights (together with a cheesed-off Miss Havisham who against her will has to protect Heathcliff from being assassinated) or secretly saving a sheepdog in an Enid Blyton yarn.
Other readers, I believe, are more interested in the parallel reality of Thursday's "real world", with its quirky world-building details, than the bookish stuff. They probably prefer The Woman Who Died to One of Our Thursdays (the latter is set almost entirely in the BookWorld), while for me it's the opposite. I resent the lack of BookWorld in The Woman Who Died, and besides I think the whole smiting plot is a bit off. I may also be the only Thursday Next fan out there who's not wild about book number four, Something Rotten (limited BookWorld, Hamlet doesn't add much, and my are those Neanderthals annoying).
Dark Reading Matter has an acceptable BookWorld ratio and plenty of meta jokes. Maybe even too many. If the novel has a problem, it's not a lack of ideas, but rather a surplus of them. There are a lot of sprawling subplots stitched together, sometimes haphazardly. That said, this is something of a Ffordian feature. I tend to enjoy his novels more when rereading them than the first time around. When you want to know how things will turn out, all the side quests can be frustrating, as they slow down the plot momentum not a little. On the other hand, when you're already assured everything will be fine you can appreciate their charm.
I'm not sure I particularly approve of the notion of Thursday becoming self-aware and realising that she, too, is a fictional character. It makes the whole book-series-within-a-book-series situation, which was the setup for First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays, even more complicated (unsurprisingly, the written Thursday doesn't show up in this novel, as that would have been a metafictional labyrinth too far). However, as this idea is so important to the whole way the novel is constructed – what with Thursday frantically having to make use of various well-known plot devices in order to save her own existence and that of her world yet again – it's something you just have to swallow.
You can pick plenty of holes in the various plots. What was the payoff of the whole Reality Distortion Field thing, in the end? Did the "redacted donkey" really have to be in the book at all, especially as he's not even allowed to act like himself "for copyright reasons"? Isn't the Hades plotline surprisingly underwhelming? Why are the villains making such weird alliances, and isn't the main antagonist rather a pale figure (although with impressively menacing skills at his disposal)? I may have resented that the late lamented Goliath goon Jack Schitt didn't get a redemption arc in The Woman Who Died a Lot (come on, don't tell me the previous two novels didn't set it up?), but Dark Reading Matter could have done with some of his unapologetic cynicisms.
At the same time, most plot elements I have nit-picks about have their saving graces. I thought that Fforde was too emphatically harsh on writers of novels featuring angsty affluent Londoners (what have these writers ever done to him, except perhaps win awards he should have got?), but I loved the characters Jocasta and Barnaby, who try to warn off Thursday from meddling in BookWorld business while simultaneously arguing for the health benefits of hummus. I wasn't very invested in the subplot of the rundown Shakespearean theme park and its unlikely new draw, but the way its conclusion closes out Thursday's story is comedy gold.
Dark Reading Matter isn't perfect, but it isn't tired, and that's the main thing. This is not the book to start with for newbies, but Thursday Next fans should definitely not pass up on her last hurrah.
