The Eyre Affair is a very enthusiastic book. It must have been great fun to write and it's also great fun to read. The author clearly never thought something would be "far fetched" or "unrealistic". In general I love the approach where the writer comes up with something crazy and then builds a logical world around the crazy. The Eyre Affair has this in spades. Time travel, pet dodos, literary crimes investigation, Shakespeare conspiracy theories, a black hole, surrealist gangs, French revisionist assassins, werewolves, vampires, etc. Really anything goes, and it's all made to make sense. It doesn't take itself very seriously, but it's not a joke either.

It's all made really enjoyable by lovable characters and some solid drama. I did not expect the drama and it's certainly not a major point of the book, but I was happy to find it in the story of Snood and in the Thursday–Anton–Landen.

It has a heavy literature element, but that should not scare anyone. I haven't read many classics and it was still fine. I looked things up on Wikipedia and learned enough that I would get most of the clever jokes in the book.

I'll read the next one too! ([b:Lost in a Good Book|27000|Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next, #2)|Jasper Fforde|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1419889476s/27000.jpg|1918119])