It looks like everyone's favorite Literary Detective Thursday Next will be back come next summer. Jasper Fforde's Dark Reading Matter will be the seventh - but probably not final - book in the Thursday Next series. Hodder the UK publisher of the series has the book marked for a July 12th release across the pond. No official word on the US release date, but Viking tends to release their version within a month of the UK release. Dark reading matter or playfully shorten to DRM has actually been mentioned a couple times in past Thursday Next books. This bit is from First Among Sequels:
"The Nothing is a big place," I said without fear of understatement, "and mostly empty. Theoretical storyoloists have calculated that the readable BookWorld makes up only twenty-two percent of visible reading matter - the remainder is unobservable remnants of long-lost books, forgotten oral tradition and ideas still locked in writers' heads. We call it 'dark reading matter.'"The blurb for Dark Reading Matter (below) is very spoiler heavy if you're not caught up on the series do avoid it, but check out my essay on why I love this series to get in the know.
The Bookworld's leading enforcement officer Thursday Next is four months into an enforced semi-retirement following a near fatal assassination attempt. She returns home to Swindon for what you'd expect to be a time of recuperation and rest. If only life were that simple.Fforde's second YA Dragonslayer book The Song of the Quarkbeast was just released in the UK to tide us all over for our Fforde fix. I for one can't wait for the sequel of Shades of Grey though. That was a simply marvelous read all around.
Thursday is faced with an array of family problems - her son Friday's lack of focus since his career in the Chronoguard was relegated to a might-have-been, daughter Tuesday's difficulty perfecting the Anti-Smote shield needed in time to thwart an angry Deity's promise to wipe Swindon off the face of the earth, and Jenny, who doesn't exist except as a confusing memory.
And that's not all. With Goliath attempting to replace Thursday at every opportunity with synthetic Thursdays, the prediction that Friday's Destiny-Aware colleagues will die in mysterious circumstances, and a looming meteorite that could destroy all human life on earth, Thursday's retirement is going to be anything but easy.
If you thought dealing with the Bookworld could be hard, wait until you see what it takes to be a mother.
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Fforde is awesome. I'm a huge fan. I would like another sequel to his other series about the Fairy tales detectives, I liked both of those novels in that series.
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