The Well of Lost Plots in the third installment of the speculative, absurdist Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde. It has long been my favourite, the book where Fforde’s world inside and behind books really comes alive.
Pursued by Goliath Corporation, Thursday takes up residence inside fiction in a poorly written and unpublishable novel in the Well of Lost Plots. Yet something is very suss in the fiction world. A number of jurisfiction agents meet unnatural deaths and it all seems to be linked to an upcoming upgrade to the book operating system, UltrawordTM. Meanwhile Thursday battles with a mindworm that is slowly erasing her memories of her husband, himself eradicated by Goliath.
This book in the series develops how fiction is created in the Well, interspersed with Jurisfiction assignments that range from anger management sessions with the characters of Wuthering Heights to feeding rogue mythical beasts and plot adjustments inside Enid Blyton. All the usual word-humour and hijinks are there. This book also forms the background to Fforde’s spin-off Nursery Crime series (which also stands alone).