I was given this book as a birthday present by a friend, some of their book presents over the years have led to me finding my new favourite series – The Fairyland series by Catherynne M. Valente – and a few that I am glad were a present so someone else was spending the money on them.

With this book though, I’m not sure which category to place the book in. The book is thoroughly entertaining and the premise alone should be enough to keep anyone reading, but I’m still not sure I like the writing style and am unsure whether I would find the premise as entertaining in future series (there are currently 8 overall).

“Take no heed of her,” explained Jones apologetically. “She reads a lot of books.”

Narrated by Thursday Next – a police officer in the literary division – the book is set in the 1980’s in a world where the Crimean War is still happening and someone is kidnapping fictional characters from their books and holding them to ransom in the real world.

“I shouldn’t believe anything I say, if I were you-and that includes what I just told you.”

The writing style is not as bad as I think it is, I’m just overly picky about these sorts of things. The alternate universe seems as if it has enough going on without adding the fictional characters that we have in our world and if the book had less of the adventure and action, then the differences between our world and the world of Thursday Next could be better explained and explored without losing out on any of the story.

“The industrial age had only just begun; the planet had reached its Best Before date.”

The book is thoroughly entertaining to read, it’s a book that is worth reading for the premise alone and I am seriously contemplating asking my friend for the next book in the series for Christmas so I don’t have to spend money on it myself.