Not content with simply writing pulp meta-fiction, Fforde now ventures into the world of pulp meta-meta-fiction. The Big Over Easy is basically the novel in which Thursday Next lived in books two and three of that series, which at that point was called Caversham Heights. Heights was scheduled for demolition and Thursday recommended to its characters that they reform the book and move it in a new direction.

The Big Over Easy is the book that Caversham Heights becomes, though this isn't stated explicitly, since that would be jumping (meta-)levels, and this isn't that sort of book.

Anyway, that's all well and good, but completely irrelevant since you can easily read this one without having read a Thursday Next book, you'll just miss a few small "Easter Eggs".

I thought Fforde's work was getting a bit strained in Something Rotten, but switching to new characters seems to have freshened him up a bit, which is nice to see. This book is quite good, with many of the fun qualities of the first Thursday Next books, though with a different one, because there's no jumping in and out of books, and thus it's a more straightfoward (though weird and comic) murder mystery with lots of satire.

I found this story more engaging than the Thursday Next novels, since it's less clever, and so I spent less time intellectually considering cleverness, and more time just absorbing the story. Of course, part of the fun of reading it was looking for references to the Thursday Next novels.

This being the fourth book in Fforde's Thursday Next series, it's probably easiest to simply compare it to what came before.

I felt like Fforde was starting to run a little dry of good, funny ideas and so resorted to some ridiculous, more-silly-than-funny ideas in this one. Maybe a little less desire to make something really hilarious would have served the book well.

Anyway, for those who've enjoyed the first three books (which I did), there's no reason not to read this one as well. It wraps up the series nicely and it's not terrible or anything, just a little strained compared to the earlier books (particularly the first two).

So this is the third book in this series, though each one more or less stands alone (the first more than the second and third). It's kind of hard to review the third book in a series, since mostly what I want to say is that if you liked the first two you'll probably like this one.

This book takes place almost entirely in BookWorld, which is different from the first two. That's interesting. And there's lots of characters who are only briefly introduced in the first one who get more page time. But overall, the style and humor are the same. I'm still finding it entertaining enough, so I'll no doubt be reading book four in the near future.

This is a pretty good book, but I wish I'd read Jane Eyre before I started it. A good chunk of the story depends on being familiar with Jane Eyre, and so not having read it, I had to find some online Cliffs Notes-like site to get the skeleton of the plot.

It's still really fun and entertaining, and there are many many other literary and artistic references throughout the book, as well as references to all sorts of SF/F standbys such as vampires, werewolves, time travel (and time paradoxes), demons, and more. It's pretty much overflowing with ideas, which explains the plethora of sequels.