The Eyre Affair

 I read this book when it was new.  Actually, I think I listened to it.  I vaguely remember listening to it while I drove from Ohio to New Jersey to see my godson and his parents.  Last year my friend, Tim, and I did a flurry of book exchanges and he sent this to me.  I didn't get to it.  Then, a couple weeks ago, I chose a sleek red book with a snazzy multicolored yarn ribbon as a blind date.  "Fantasy Fiction," it said.  "Come with me," I said.

The Eyre Affair.  Obviously - the universe felt like I needed to revisit.  Actually, insisted upon it.

Fford has created a marvelous universe where Special Ops agents investigate all sorts of wonderous criminal enterprises including temporal crimes, literary crimes, nursery crimes, vampires, etc.   In this, his first novel, he introduces Thursday Next, an agent in the literacy division, her dad who is a fugitive agent from the temporal division, her eccentric and brilliant inventor uncle, Mycroft, and a demonic villain Archeron Hades.  Hades plan is to steal the original version of a beloved novel, use Uncle Myroft's Prose Portal to enter the novel, kidnap a character, and then...  Any change he can made to the original will get  written into all copies of the book in existence.  

Of himself, Archeron says, "I' not mad.  I'm just, well, differently moraled."  "He lists slow murder, torture, and flower arranging as his hobbies in Which Criminal."

Ann says, "Droll and smart.  A perfect blind date."  Happy Valentine's Day.