Murder by Death

Since I might be the last person to have read Fforde, I'll not bore everyone with a blow-by-blow review of The Eyre Affair.  Just a quick summation of my thoughts.

I found it difficult to get into it at the start.  There's no info-dump and the world building is, in a way, non-existent.  As the reader I was left to figure out most of what was possible as things happened in the book.  This, along with my expectation that the story was going to begin with Thursday being able to jump in and out of books, slowed me down for the first 1/3 of the book.  Once I got a grip on what was going on, the story became more immersive and I found it harder to put the book down.

I also struggled a bit with the POV.  It's first person but also occasionally slips into third person objective and this threw me off my game more than once.  I didn't hate it but yeah, it would stop me in my tracks and I'd have to think "wait a minute - what?" and re-read a couple of paragraphs to find my groove again.

Having said all of that, it's an excellent story and the fantastical premise is guaranteed to hook me and keep me coming back for more.  That moment in the FOTL store where I held this book in my hand and thought "hmm... a buck - should I?  Why not?" was definitely one of my better literary buying impulses.