Yesterday I finished The Well of Lost Plots, the third Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde.

The Thursday Next novels postulate a world where books are actually parallel worlds, inhabited by real characters who can travel from book to book and have lives of their own when they are not being read. In some ways, the idea is similar to what was used in Gary Wolf's Who Censored Roger Rabbit or in the film A Purple Rose in Cairo but more thoroughly developed and explored. Fforde also uses it as an excuse to engage in meta-fiction tricks like having the characters in the book aware of footnotes or mis-spellings.

My reaction to The Well of Lost Plots was similar to my reaction to the first two books - at first I was bit put off by the over-cute meta-fiction tricks and references to different books/characters sprinkled liberally throughtout but by the end of the book it had won me over and I quite enjoyed it.