The Woman Who Died a Lot: Thursday Next Book 7 by Jasper Fforde

Thursday Next is becoming old. All the injuries she sustained in her earlier adventures are slowing her down. She is given a job as head librarian. She was hoping to be the leader of a new agency, but that went to someone younger and more fit. However, the library has a budget in the tens of millions of pounds and they store the most valuable manuscripts. Library workers have almost unlimited power including the use of lethal force to stop excessive noise in reading rooms or in retrieving unreturned library books. So perhaps that isn’t so bad a job after all. But she has many problems which complicate her life. The evil Goliath Company is trying to replace her with an android. Her son, who was destined to become the leader of the time travel agency is out of job as time travel was noticed to be impossible. That discovery caused the abolishment of the time travel agency retroactively. Everyone who was supposed to work at the time travel agency got two letters, one telling them what was supposed to happen and another telling what would happen in the new time line without time travel. According to the new time line, he will murder someone in just few weeks and will spend the next decades in prison. And God will be smiting her home town pretty soon. Her daughter is developing an anti-smiting shield, but she probably won’t be able to finish it in time. Her other daughter doesn’t actually exist, but is just a false memory caused by Aornis Hades, her arch enemy, who is able to control memories. These are only a few of the several plot lines the book has. The first half of the book was more of an avalanche of ideas and events which didn’t necessarily form a very coherent whole. Most of the ideas were intriguing and entertaining. Something which resembles a more traditional plot emerged slowly and the book came to a pretty satisfying conclusion. Even so, it was the weakest part of the series. I was missing the Bookworld, which wasn’t featured at all in this book. Hopefully the author doesn’t abandon that completely.

386 pp.