The first few chapters of the sequel do an excellent job of exposition - but this isn't the sort of book you can pick up without having recently read the original. I got a dozen pages into Red Side Story before I realised that I remembered nothing about the original. So I went back to read Shades of Grey. I'm delighted to say it was just as good as I remember - a delirious ride through a messed up world.

The second book is… more of the same. It slowly reveals more of the backstory and its grim origins. It builds to a rather satisfying conclusion. Along the way it gets a little tied-up in its own rules, and makes some weird pop-culture references. But never fails to be brilliantly perplexing in its structured surrealness.

In one my smarter moments I likened our era to someone arriving late to a concert, just as the final chords were hanging in the air.

If you like Fforde's inventive and bizarre worlds, you'll like this. But, I warn you, it really needs you to have read Shades of Grey first.

‘Rehoming rabbits in Wales’ policy was won on a slender majority and with half the country not voting at all.

The humour is daft and, on more than one occasion, near the knuckle. He lays delicious traps for the reader and is expert at revealing our culture's weird foibles.

The back-and-forth nature of the storytelling felt a little unnecessary. It almost feels like it wants to be a documentary, but ends up diminishing some of the tension. The gentle reveal of the true nature of several characters is expertly done.

Funny, and just a little terrifying.

I've finally received a reply...

Dear Terence,

Some time ago you contacted us regarding the following eBook title, "One of Our Thursdays is Missing (eBook): Thursday Next Series, Book 6" (ISBN: 9781444713039). We have had our eBook supplier investigate the content issue of this eBook title in conjunction with the publishers. They have confirmed that this title has been corrected.

Our suppliers have said, "We apologize for any delay that it has taken to resolve this issue. Issues with content require corrections from the publisher and can often take weeks or months to resolve. Unfortunately the time it took to correct this issue was due to delays from the publisher and not OverDrive."

You will now be able to purchase and download the correct content for this title if you wish to do so. Please accept my apologies for the delay.

Kind regards,

In fairness, they did refund the cost of the ebook. Rather annoyingly, they revoked my access to download it again.

I realise that it must take some time to find a sober editor in a publishing company - but 12 weeks to replace one image with another really doesn't seem right.

It's sloppy errors and poor customer service like this which will kill the eBook revolution.

Or, perhaps, that's just what some publishers want...?

Well, I say a "worrying flaw" - I mean an error. All books contain errata - I think that's a given - but outside of academia, Jasper Fforde is the only author I know who offers upgrades to his books.

Here's a sample from the original Thursday Next "patch"

5: Using a fine black pen make the following corrections:

6: Go to page 32 and replace 'Stella' with 'Steller's - this is the correct spelling. The large slow-moving-manatee-type-mermaid-legend creature was named by Georg Wilhelm Steller, the German naturalist.

What's The Error?

The book contains a number of charming illustrations - the final illustration is meant to be (NO SPOILERS) about a wiped out clown army. Instead, it's a repeat of an earlier illustration of (NO SPOILERS) mimes encircling a car.

At the time of writing, there's no upgrade listed for the latest book - although there are a range of fabulous special features. I've dropped Mr Fforde an email alerting him to this devastating turn of events.

Yes, yes, it's fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

Expecting More

Of course, one could argue that traditional books don't get upgrades - so why should this be a problem for ebooks?

• I can take my physical book back to the shop and get a replacement. Or even send it back to the publisher. With eBooks, this is virtually impossible - not least because of the DRM issues involved in revoking a book.
• If a book contains a serious error, I can print out an errata sheet. The DRM on eBooks prevents me from altering their contents.
• We should expect more. This is a new medium - we should expect more than simply plain text in a DRM layer.

Yes, it all comes down to DRM - or, as Jasper Fforde puts it...

The DRM was the Dark Reading Matter – the unseeable part of the BookWorld.

and

DRM’s existence remained theoretical, at best.

I don't know if I'm reading too much in to Fforde's work - but he doesn't strike me as the sort of author to use an acronym without a thorough understanding of what it means. I have no shame in saying that I removed the DRM on the ePub I purchased in order to read it on my Kindle (which does not support Adobe's DRM scheme).

I don't know how I expect an eBook upgrade to work - with or without DRM. I don't want an author, book seller, or publisher to randomly change the book I'm reading - that's a little too similar to Amazon deleting 1984 from its Kindles.

I know I don't want to buy an entirely new copy - just because some punctuation has been fixed.

Should I be able to download a diff and let my eReader decide which version of a book I want to see?

Should I be able to get an update free? Should it cost?

So many questions and so few answers. If you've got any thoughts on the matter - please let me know.