is it pratchett

Welcome to the Sir Terry Pratchett Forums
Register here for the Sir Terry Pratchett forum and message boards.
Sign up

chris.ph

Sergeant-at-Arms
Aug 12, 2008
7,991
2,350
swansea south wales
#1
there are two authors tht i reall like other than the revered terryp and they r simon r green and jasper fforde. ones a horror fantasy writer and the later is an alternate cimedy world writer. i once thought both where a bit pratchettian in the way they they strung certainsentences together and the use of certain words eg.. sussurus and tattoo.
has anybody else thought they where reading a pratchett novel by an other name???
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
#2
I'm a big fan of the Jasper Fforde books and have managed to convert a few other people as well. :laugh:

Robert Rankin's books are a tiny by Pratchetesque in that they are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and there's lots of bizarre stuff going on. But they don't have that depth of satire that Terry writes with.

The closest I've come to there are Jonathon Swift and Mark Twain.
 

Jason

Special Constable
Jul 10, 2008
727
2,650
52
Pontarddulais - Wales
discworldmonthly.co.uk
#4
Jasper Fford is a fan of Terry's. I was at a talk he presented to coincide with the release of The Forth Bear and he mentioned he admired authors whose worlds had a tangable set of physical rules, and the example he gave was Terry's Discworld novels.
 

silverstreak

Lance-Corporal
Aug 1, 2008
182
1,775
Llanelli,Wales
#5
I'll have to give this Jasper Fford chappie a try.

Another author I like quite a lot is Tom Sharpe,enough for me to have all of his books.Porterhouse Blue being his best I think.
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
#6
If you read the Jasper Fforde books - at least the 'Thursday Next' books, you need to read them in order because it's a series.

The first book is 'The Eyre Affair'. :)
 

silverstreak

Lance-Corporal
Aug 1, 2008
182
1,775
Llanelli,Wales
#9
chris.ph said:
silverstreak i bought my jasper books really cheap in the discount bookshop in carmarthen, there were loads there.

Thanks for that Chris.However I've just come back from spending most of today in Carmarthen,without going into said shop and I've only now seen your comment from yesterday.Damn...Damn...Damn.
 

Tonyblack

Super Moderator
City Watch
Jul 25, 2008
30,841
3,650
Cardiff, Wales
#14
Albert_Spangler said:
What are the books in the series as I have recently bought a Jasper Fforde book and don't want to read it out of sequence
Bibliography

Thursday Next
The Eyre Affair (2001)
Lost in a Good Book (2002)
The Well of Lost Plots (2003)
Something Rotten (2004)
First Among Sequels (2007)
One of our Thursdays is Missing (Announced for January 2011)

Nursery Crimes
The Big Over Easy (2005)
The Fourth Bear (2006)
The Last Great Tortoise Race (Unknown)

Eddie Russett
Shades of Grey (Title on the cover), Shades of Grey 1: The Road to High Saffron (Title on the inside)
Shades of Grey 1: The Road to High Saffron ends with a note that the main characters Brunswick & deMauve will return in:
Shades of Grey 2: Painting by Numbers
Shades of Grey 3: The Gordini Protocols

I haven't read Shades of Grey yet and have no idea what all those titles are about. o_O
 

unseenu

Lance-Corporal
Feb 19, 2010
171
1,775
Hull,uk
#17
I read a book once which was a comic guide to aspects of everyday life,unfortunately i don't remember the title or the authour.Some of the jokes in it seemed to have pratchett's style of humour,the only quote I can remember is from the chapter on death "Dying can be as easy as falling off a log...which is why its best to avoid climbing on logs :laugh: "
 

Polly

Lance-Constable
Apr 21, 2009
46
1,650
Kilmarnock, Scotland
#18
I read the jasper fforde books after TonyBlack recommended them - they are really good. I prefer the nursery crime over thursday next (but not by much) but there are only the two!

Shades of Grey was Ok - is very different from the nursery/next books. Cant wait for his next Next book to come out - I think it's later this year.

There always tends to be notes at the end of each book about the next one but the next book doesn't alway match the names listed.
 

raisindot

Sergeant-at-Arms
Oct 1, 2009
5,125
2,450
Boston, MA USA
#19
I'm probably going to get raked over the coals--again--but I think that with each successive novel Fforde has gotten much worse.

"The Eyre Affair" was clever and quite good, even if Fforde quite clearly stole the whole concept from Woody Allen's classic "The Klugelmas(sp.) Episode."

Fforde's main problem is that he's so self-consciously aware that he's treading a trail that other great, inventive British comic writers (Adams, Pratchett, Dahl) have already blazed so well that he tries desperately hard to be wackier, wittier, punnies and more original that his influences and, more often than not, falls flat on his face.

This is particarly evident in the sequels to "The Eyre Affair," where each succeeding book gets bogged down endless stretches of exposition and attempts at cleverness that just don't work. And, over time, Thursday has become an increasingly annoying and one-dimensional character. The last book was the hardest slog I've been through with a thoroughly stupid ending.

"The Big Over Easy" is, for me, the best thing he's done, much better than any of the Thursday Next series, but he wrote this before "The Eyre Affair," and perhaps that's why it's better--because he wasn't trying to be so self-consciously 'original.' But the same sequelitis problem that he's had with the TN series raises its head here, because "The Fourth Bear" is a pale shadow of "Over Easy."

I haven't even tried to read his new one.

J-I-B
 

User Menu

Newsletter