I am a big Jasper Fforde fan. The man has great wit, great imagination, and has written worlds I literally could only dream of. Also, he made the great move to publish a book called Shades of Grey just before 50 Shades of Grey became a thing, throwing lots of ladies off course. He hadn't written anything for a while, especially not the sequel to the aforementioned Shades of Grey, but then finally his newest novel came out: Early Riser. The plot, about a guy being awake in a world filled with sleeping people, and becoming tangled up in events out of his reach, sounded good. Also, it was Jasper Fforde. So I ordered it.
After reading 20 pages, I actually went online to check whether this wasn't the Shades of Grey sequel after all, but in a very weird way. The book reads exactly the same; first person protagonist, a guy, not too smart, takes a journey by train to some remote sector/city to do just one little job, but somehow becomes mixed up in local events. People disappear, hints are strewn around, smart girls try to help the dimwitted protagonist, 'megafauna' roam the land, all kinds of old technology are still relevant and all of this set in a world like ours, but different in slight ways. In Shades of Grey, people can only see one colour. In Early Riser, people go inside Dormatoria to sleep through the winter because it becomes too cold. Also in the latter, more people die. Otherwise, it is exactly the same story. Only this one actually has a closing chapter.
On the positive side, the novel also includes the funny side characters, word jokes, weird names and plot twists I love about his work. Also, the story is pretty imaginative, even if a bit exposition-heavy (it even includes footnotes to explain things about the world). I just felt sad that Mr Fforde would rather go off creating this new world, keeping practically the same protagonist, while he could have written the sequel to Shades of Grey instead. On top of that, Thursday Next of his The Eyre Affair and other novels is pretty smart. She is resourceful. She can figure things out. This protagonist, Charlie Worthing, somehow turns into Thursday Next in the final chapters, figuring out how to save the day at the last moment. It just felt wrong. Even though the twists at the end made the story itself better, more complex, the change in Charlie's personality was just so abrupt that I still didn't buy it.
Most Fforde novels take me a couple of days to get through. This one took almost a month. According to my own rules I should have put it aside at some point, but I couldn't, because it is still Jasper Fforde. But I really hope his next novel will be better, or the day may come that I actually not finish one of his stories. And a sad day it would be.
