Category Archives: Speculative Fiction

The Fourth Thursday Next Took Me a While to Appreciate: Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde

Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde is the fourth book in the Thursday Next series. Thursday and her young son Friday leave their life in the Well of Lost Plots and return to Swindon where Thursday attempts to get her husband … Continue reading

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Quintessential Diana Wynne Jones: Archer’s Goon is about a boy, a family, a town and a threatening goon who takes up residence in the kitchen

Archer’s Goon is classic Diana Wynne Jones with various mysteries and characters gradually converging. The arrival of the Goon in Howard and Awful’s kitchen, demanding mysterious payment in the form of written words from their author-father, leads them to the … Continue reading

Posted in 10 years and up, 11 years and up, 13 years and up, 20th Century Children's, Adventure, British, Children's Classic, Comedy, Fantasy, Fiction, Novel, Speculative Fiction, YA Classic, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

My Favourite Thursday Next Novel: The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

The Well of Lost Plots in the third installment of the speculative, absurdist Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde… Continue reading

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Would you like world-ending pink topping with that? Lost is a Good Book is a generous second helping of Thursday Next from Jasper Fforde

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde is the second book in the Thursday Next series. Despite a sudden celebrity for saving Jane Eyre and improving the ending, not every one is happy with what Thursday has done. A … Continue reading

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Wit and wordplay, parody and playfulness, allusion and appropriation: Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair is to classic literature what Hitchhiker’s Guide is to sci-fi and fantasy

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde is set in an alternate England, where home-cloned dodos are common house pets and the public’s passion for literature occasionally erupts in street violence. Thursday Next is a literary detective, part of a specialised … Continue reading

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Perelandra by C.S. Lewis: A Christian novel that grips thoughts, feelings and will

I found Out of the Silent Planet slow to get into but ultimately intriguing, enjoyable and thought provoking. In contrast, Perelandra, the second in C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy, gets quickly into the action, was mesmerizing, suspenseful and thrilling by turns, … Continue reading

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Slow to Start but Ultimately Intriguing: C.S. Lewis begins his theological speculative fiction trilogy with Out of the Silent Planet

How would humans respond to other intelligent life if we found it on another planet? How might such life differ from us? How might we react to such differences? How might several such species coexist peacefully on a single planet? … Continue reading

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The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis is one of my favourite books. It’s a book about the Christian life written in the form of letters from a senior to a junior devil, who is tasked with sabotaging the spiritual life … Continue reading

Posted in 20th Century Classics, British, Christian, Christian Living, Christian Non-fiction, Classic, Comedy, Epistolary Novel, Fantasy, Fiction, General adult audience, Novel, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis is the first (chronologically) in the Narnia series. If you’ve never read Narnia then start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but make sure you come back to the prequel. It’s a … Continue reading

Posted in 20th Century Children's, 7 years and up, Allegory, British, Children's Classic, Christian, Fantasy, Fiction, Novel, Speculative Fiction | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is an hilarious 1930s novel about Flora Post, a young woman with no useful skills but a strong desire for tidiness. She goes to live with the very untidy Starkadder family at Cold Comfort … Continue reading

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