Characters in the Thursday Next Series
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The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde currently consists of the novels, The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten. A fifth novel, First Among Sequels is due to be published in July 2007.
Contents |
[edit] The Eyre Affair
[edit] Victor Analogy
In his seventies, Analogy is the head of the Swindon branch of SO-27, the LiteraTecs, and is therefore Thursday's immediate superior.
[edit] Bowden Cable
An operative for SO-27, the LiteraTecs, assigned to the Swindon branch, and thus a colleague of Thursday Next. In his thirties and with a slightly fussy, nervous edge to him, Bowden is intelligent and, at times, quite sly and cunning. He was responsible for thwarting the plans of Jack Schitt and the Goliath Corporation when he substituted a copy of Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven in place of the weapons manual that Schitt thought he was accessing.
[edit] Acheron Hades
Hugely intelligent and equally amoral, Acheron Hades started out as a lecturer in English, teaching, among others, Thursday Next, before he turned to a life of crime. Believed by some to be only half-human, the other half being allegedly demonic or vampiric in nature (he casts no shadow), Acheron possesses a number of mysterious powers (as, indeed, do most of his siblings). He cannot be photographed or recorded in any way, and has shown the ability to know when his name is uttered within a considerable distance. He has shown an immunity to the effects of most weapons, his only confirmed vulnerability being to silver. Said to have the ability to "lie in thought, word and action" he also possesses formidable powers of deception, including the ability to assume the shape of others and hypnotic persuasive abilities.
Hades appears as the principal villain of The Eyre Affair. He kidnaps Mycroft Next and steals his Prose Portal, using it to enter stolen original manuscripts of such classic tales as Martin Chuzzlewit and Jane Eyre, with the aim of extracting characters from them and holding them to ransom. When Thursday rescued the extracted Jane Eyre, Hades escaped into the book, pursued by Thursday. Ultimately, they confronted each other in Thornfield Hall, where Thursday was finally able to eliminate her opponent once and for all.
Acheron is the eldest child of the Hades Family, which is apparently evil as a whole (only one member is mentioned as not really being evil, Lethe, the apparent "white sheep" of the family). It is also implied that they have been evil for generations; as Acheron's sister Aornis puts it, "No member of the Hades family has been captured alive for eighty-eight generations."
Hades has made the occasional appearance in the later books, showing up within Thursday's memories.
[edit] Mrs. Nakajima
A Japanese literary tourist, and a member of Jurisfiction. She gives Thursday the tools to become a Jurisfiction agent herself. After her husband's retirement, the couple moved into Thornfield Hall within the novel Jane Eyre, where they manage the house, carefully avoiding any appearances in the narrative.
[edit] Anton Next
Brother to Thursday and Joffy Next and best friend of Landen Parke-Laine. He fought in the Crimean War and died there during a disastrous battle which occurred after he accidentally sent his unit off in the wrong direction. After much agonising over whether to tell the truth, Landen finally gave evidence to the inquest about Anton's error, which drove a wedge between him and Thursday, until the two reconciled during the events of The Eyre Affair.
[edit] Colonel Next
Thursday's father and ex-member of SO-12, the Chronoguard. Went rogue, leading the Chronoguard to delete him from history by interrupting his conception, however, due to his skills at time manipulation, still exists and drops in on his family from time to time to assist or pass on advice. By the events of Something Rotten, he has rejoined the Chronoguard, albeit in a reduced capacity.
[edit] Joffy Next
Brother of Thursday and Anton Next. He is a minister for the Global Standard Deity, which aims to represent all of the others equally and without prejudice, with the laudable aim of attempting to prevent religious conflict. Cheerful, frequently irreverent almost but (usually) not quite to the point of being irritating and laid-back, he nevertheless has an extremely caring nature and a great deal of wisdom, which serves him well in his chosen vocation. He generally calls Thursday 'Doofus' and used to slap her on the back of the head on a daily basis until she broke his nose to get him to stop, but the two are very close. He is in a relationship with Miles Hawke, an operative with SpecOps-14.
[edit] Mycroft Next
Thursday's uncle and husband of Polly. Mycroft is an inventor of strange and unusual devices of varying degrees of use. Some have proved to be important plot devices throughout the series, such as his Prose Portal, which allowed real-world individuals to enter books and the Ovinator, which encourages cooperation. Others, such as his device for erasing memories (which he has no recollection of ever inventing) serve purely as running gags. He has been hunted by the Goliath Corporation, who wished to use his Prose Portal to retrieve fictional weaponry from the Bookworld to sell in the real world. He retired into the Bookworld, living within the Sherlock Holmes series of books, where he occasionally interfered with the narrative, appearing as Holmes' brother.
[edit] Polly Next
Thursday's aunt and wife of Mycroft. She generally serves as Mycroft's assistant, as she possesses far more common sense than her husband. She was temporarily held hostage within the William Wordsworth poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by Acheron Hades during the events of The Eyre Affair.
[edit] Thursday Next
[edit] Wednesday Next
Mother to Thursday Next and her brothers. She used to work for SpecOps 3 (and claims to still do so on occasion), but has now become something of a homebody, and is generally found there throughout the novels. She loves her husband, despite his eradication, but has occasional suspicions about his fidelity, particularly regarding his dealings with Lady Emma Hamilton. She herself is not immune to other men, it transpires, as she develops an apparent interest in Otto Bismarck when he stays with her for a few days.
[edit] Landen Parke-Laine
Thursday's husband, Landen is an award-winning novelist, whose books include Bad Sofa, Memoirs of A Crimean Veteran and Once Were Scoundrels. He served as an officer in the Crimean War, during which he came into contact with Thursday, with whom he fell in love and her brother Anton, who became his best friend. During the disastrous battle which became known as the "Charge of the Light-Armored Brigade", Anton was killed and Landen lost a leg. During the subsequent inquest, Landen, after much agonizing, admitted that Anton had made an error that had had led to the destruction of their unit. As a result, Thursday left him and refused to speak to him for ten years. They came back into contact during the events of The Eyre Affair, during which Thursday was finally able to forgive Landen and agreed to marry him.
During the events of Lost in a Good Book, Landen is eradicated from history by a rogue member of the Chronoguard, acting on behalf of the Goliath Corporation, who wish to blackmail Thursday into returning their operative Jack Schitt. He then appears only in Thursday's memories until reactualised during Something Rotten.
His name is one of Fforde's trademark puns: in the British edition of the board game Monopoly, Park Lane is the second to last street/square on the board and consequently one of the most expensive. It therefore may or may not be a good thing to "land on Park Lane" depending on your position in the game. As additions to this pun, Landen's late father is named "Billden Parke-Laine" and his mother is named "Houson Parke-Laine".
[edit] Pickwick
Thursday's pet dodo, brought to life by genetic engineering. Originally she was believed to be male, but revealed to be female during the events of Lost in a Good Book, when she lays an egg. This ultimately hatches, producing her son, Alan.
[edit] Jack Schitt
Head of the Goliath Corporation's internal security service and their Advanced Weapons Division, and thus a man of great power. He showed great interest in Mycroft Next's Prose Portal, hoping to use it to retrieve fictional weaponry, having utterly failed to make the equivalent weapon work in the real world, to the extent that he was willing to work with the criminal Acheron Hades in order to gain access. Once Hades was defeated within Jane Eyre, Schitt used the Prose Portal to enter what he thought was the manual for the plasma rifle that he wanted to retrieve, only to discover that Bowden Cable had slipped a copy of the Raven by Edgar Allen Poe inside the manual's dust cover instead. The Portal closed behind him, trapping him there.
He was ultimately retrieved by Thursday Next during the events of Lost in a Good Book, after Goliath arranged to have her husband Landen eradicated from history by the Chronoguard in order to blackmail her. She cooperated, only to find herself double-crossed. Schitt, however, never returned to his original position in the corporation; when next seen, during the events of Something Rotten, he has been demoted to a far lesser role within Goliath and makes only a brief appearance.
[edit] Spike Stoker
Spike works for SO-17 and is the sole agent for that department assigned to the Reading area. He deals with undead paranormals and the capturing of Evil Supreme Beings, and occasionally enlists Thursday Next to assist with his work in exchange for money. Later in the series, he marries a woman named Cindi, who he believes to be a librarian, but is in fact an assassin. Both of his names can be seen as references to vampire-related literature and media. "Stoker" is a reference to Bram Stoker, author of Dracula; "Spike" may a reference to the character of William "The Bloody" from the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who generally went by that nickname.
Spike can be seen as a deviation from the general stereotype of lone monster-killers such as Blade, John Constantine, Abraham Van Helsing and, to a lesser extent, Buffy Summers. Spike is almost on his own against the forces of darkness, yet is arguably the cheeriest person seen in the books: he is jocular, easy-going and is rarely serious or distressed in his work. He loses his cool only rarely, although he once, in a fit of depression, considered the possibility of self-sacrifice/suicide, admitting that "battling the undead was never a bowl of cherries". He is described as a tall, muscular man with blond dreadlocks and sunglasses. It was once hinted that he suffers from either lycanthropy or vampirism and requires regular "medication"; without it he will sometimes lose control of himself and exhibit wolflike behavior, such as eating live mice.
[edit] Lost in a Good Book
[edit] The Bellman
The head of Jurisfiction. During the events of Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots, this position is filled by an unnamed individual who is only ever referred to by his title. He retired after the events of those book; Thursday was then asked to assume the role, which she accepted, holding the position for around two years before resigning during the events of Something Rotten.
[edit] The Cheshire Cat
Due to boundary changes the Cheshire Cat is now technically referred to as the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but still generally known by his original appellation. He serves as a librarian to the Grand Library, as well as a high-ranking JurisFiction official.
[edit] Cordelia Flakk
Cordelia is an attractive senior SpecOps agent who works in Public Relations. She spends the whole of Lost in a Good Book persistently trying to get Thursday to do press interviews regarding the alterations made to the storyline of Jane Eyre during the events of The Eyre Affair.
[edit] Aornis Hades
The younger sister of Acheron Hades, who appeared as a villain in Lost in a Good Book. Aornis is a mnemonomorph, a person who can alter memories at will; she can also apparently alter entropy, a concept of science. Reactions can only become more chaotic; a plate can fall to the ground and shatter, but it cannot reassemble. Aornis lowers entropy, causing extremely large-scale and bizarre coincidences to occur. She held the world to ransom in this book, giving Thursday the ultimatum that she would stop her plan if Thursday takes her own life. With her plan thwarted at the last minute by the intervention of Colonel Next, Aornis escaped and remains at large.
A mental copy of Aornis, embedded in Thursday's memories, made several appearances during the events of The Well of Lost Plots. This copy was capable of altering Thursday's memories to suit her own purposes, but was finally defeated when she summoned Thursday's worst memory, which turned out to be a childhood nightmare. The Aornis copy was unable to control it and it destroyed her, and Thursday was left with the reassurance that defeating the real Aornis would now be easy.
[edit] Miss Havisham
Miss Havisham is a member of the JurisFiction originating in the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. She was assigned as Thursday Next's mentor when the younger woman first joined Jurisfiction and tutored her through her examinations to become a fully fledged agent. A highly respected member of Jurisfiction and one of their best operatives, her hobbies included driving powerful cars at terrifyingly high speeds. This hobby was eventually used against her during the events of The Well of Lost Plots, when a car she was driving was sabotaged, causing her to crash. Badly burned, she returned to her novel, where she died.
[edit] Yorrick Kaine
Yorrick Kaine is a fictional character, originating in a highly limited self-published early novel by the author Daphne Farquitt. Kaine became a 'pagerunner', a character who escapes his or her own book and ultimately left the Bookworld altogether for the real world, where he ran for high political office during the events of Lost in a Good Book, only to be thwarted by Thursday and Jurisfiction.
By the events of Something Rotten, Kaine had advanced to the office of Chancellor, making him the second most powerful man in the land and was using Mycroft Next's ovinator to manipulate Parliament into doing what he wanted. During the events of that novel, where he was made real and ultimately lost the ovinator, he was removed from power and sank into obscurity.
[edit] Perkins and Snell
David "Pinky" Perkins and Akrid Snell were the lead characters in a set of detective novels and both worked as Jurisfiction agents.
Perkins headed up the Grammasite Research facility, located in a land appropriated from an unpublished fantasy novel, which is populated by many fictional creatures who were unable to live safely within their own novels. He was slain when the Minotaur, held captive within the fantasy, was deliberately released to kill him.
Snell worked as the lawyer for Jurisfiction. When contact was lost with Perkins, he, accompanied by Thursday Next, Miss Havisham and Commander Bradshaw, entered the research facility to investigate. When a misspelling vyrus was released within Perkin's laboratory, Snell stayed behind to attempt to deal with it. He died from his injuries shortly afterwards.
[edit] Brik Schitt-Hawse
A senior Goliath employee and half-brother of Jack Schitt. Schitt-Hawse is primarily responsible for the eradication from history of Landen Parke-Laine during the events of Lost in a Good Book, in order to blackmail Thursday into retrieving Jack Schitt from inside Poe's The Raven. Thursday agreed to retrieve Schitt, only for Schitt-Hawse to subsequently imprison her, intending to study her bookjumping ability in order to open up new potential markets for the Goliath Corporation within fiction. Thursday was able to escape with the assistance of Miss Havisham and went to live in the Bookworld in order to hide from Goliath.
Schitt-Hawse reappeared briefly in Something Rotten, when Thursday visited the CEO of the Goliath Corporation during a board meeting.
He is almost invariably accompanied by his henchmen, Mr. Chalk and Mr. Cheese.
[edit] Bartholomew Stiggins
Bartholomew Stiggins is a Neanderthal, who is head of the Swindon branch of SpecOps-13. He helped Thursday out during the events of Lost in a Good Book when she has a run-in with another Neanderthal, engineered by Aornis Hades. He reappears during Something Rotten, when he accompanies her to the old Goliath laboratory facilities in the hope of finding information that would allow his race to breed successfully, something that was left out when their race was brought back to life through genetic engineering. He then helped Thursday win a critical croquet game by providing a number of Neanderthal players to fill gaps on the team. His name is a reference to Stig of the Dump.
[edit] Cindi Stoker
Cindi is a professional assassin known as the Windowmaker. She had a contract to exterminate Thursday. Cindi is aware that Thursday knows she is an assassin, while Thursday knows Cindi wants to kill her. Spike is happily oblivious to both of these facts, and is happily married to her.
[edit] The Well of Lost Plots
[edit] Melanie Bradshaw
Wife of Trafford Bradshaw, to whom she has now been married for fifty years (the pair celebrate their golden wedding anniversary at the end of Something Rotten). As the books never describe her character to any great degree, Melanie remains in the background and is, in fact, a gorilla, although she often attempts to dress in standard female clothing, with varying degrees of success. Melanie often babysits Friday Next when Thursday is off on assignment and the two are very close.
[edit] Commander Trafford Bradshaw
The main character of a series of 1920's adventure stories for boys. Bradshaw now works as an agent for Jurisfiction and is considered to be one of their best operatives.
[edit] The Minotaur
Wanted murderer in the Book World, he also tries to kill Thursday at the end of Something Rotten. His alias is Norman Johnson. Based on the minotaur from Greek Mythology.
[edit] Randolph and Lola
Assigned to stay with Thursday in the unpublished novel Caversham Heights during the events of Lost in a Good Book, Randolph and Lola started out as truly generic characters, being sexless, ageless, nameless and with no distinguishing features of any kind. Under Thursday's influence, the pair gradually began to take on more distinctive characteristics, developing personalities, choosing genders, apparent ages and choosing their final names, Thursday having initially dubbed them as obb and ibb respectively, just to distinguish between them. Randolph took on the persona and appearance of a gentleman in his fifties, hoping to be cast in the role of a father figure or kindly mentor. Lola developed as an attractive young woman, aiming for a position as heroine in an adventure-style tale. Although the pair argued constantly, they ultimately realized that they were in love and were instrumental in the reorganization of Caversham Heights into a book where characters from other novels could take holidays away from the rather repetitious nature of their roles.
[edit] DCI Jack Spratt
Jack Spratt is the main character in the unpublished novel, Caversham Heights, where Thursday stays as part of the Character Exchange Program during the events of The Well of Lost Plots. He is also the protagonist in his own series of books written by Fforde.
[edit] Harris Tweed
A Jurisfiction agent from the real world. He is revealed as being a villain towards the end of The Well of Lost Plots. As a result of his actions, Tweed was banished from the Bookworld and now lives in Swindon.
[edit] Something Rotten
[edit] Millon De Floss
Millon is a member of the Amalgamated Union of Stalkers, authorised by SpecOps-33. He has something of a talent for spotting rising stars, having started stalking the legendary actress Lola Vavoom when she was just a bit part player. He is now a Grade 1 stalker, allowed to stalk the very highest level of celebrity, but has, instead, chosen to become Thursday's officially-licenced stalker, feeling that she, while not at the highest level as yet, is destined for great things. Having published his autobiography A Stalk on the Wild Side, Millon has attained a not-inconsiderable level of celebrity himself and has his own stalker, Adam Gnusense (who, as an experienced stalker himself, having risen to Grade 3, has recently acquired his own stalker, who he describes as being a Grade 34 loser after catching him rummaging through his dustbins).
Millon is intelligent, polite and has considerable knowledge of conspiracy theories, a resource that Thursday draws upon when trying to locate a clone of William Shakespeare. He accompanied her to Area 21, an area in mid-Wales where the Goliath Corporation had their laboratories, to help out. As this was technically outside the remit of his stalker activities, he asked, in return, if he could be her official biographer, something to which Thursday readily agreed.
Many of the excerpts from fictional works found at the beginning of each chapter have ostensibly been written by DeFloss.
[edit] George Formby
Made England's President-for-life after his resistance work during the German Occupation. See George Formby for information on the real one.
[edit] Hamlet
The Prince of Denmark, from the Shakespeare play. He accompanied Thursday on her return to the real world at the beginning of Something Rotten, as he was concerned at the perception in the Outland that he was an indecisive character. During his time there, he became romantically involved with Lady Emma Hamilton and found a new decisiveness within himself, one that he originally planned to take back into his play and rewrite it from within, portraying himself as a much more dynamic character. Ultimately, however, he came to realise that the flaws in his character are what make his play memorable and much loved, and elected to leave his play as it was. He chose to focus his energies elsewhere, joining Jurisfiction as their agent for the Shakespearean and Marlowe plays.
As a parting gift, Thursday gave Hamlet Alan the dodo, the tearaway son of her own dodo, Pickwick, to take with him, as Hamlet had proven to be the only one able to get Alan to behave himself.
[edit] Tuesday Next
Daughter of Thursday Next. She has only appeared so far at the very end of Something Rotten, when many of Thursday's as-yet unborn descendants appear.
[edit] Friday Next
Friday is the son of Thursday and Landen Parke-Laine. While he is an infant during the chronology of the novels, Friday later joins SO-12, the Chronoguard, rising to become head of the department and, according to his grandfather, Colonel Next, a time manipulator of extraordinary skill. As such, he appears as an adult on a couple of occasions in the books, although is unidentified until the end of Something Rotten. As a baby, Friday speaks only Lorem Ipsum, due to his upbringing in the Bookworld. He is close to Melanie Bradshaw, who frequently baby-sat for him.
| Novels by Jasper Fforde | |
| Thursday Next series | |
|---|---|
| The Eyre Affair | Lost in a Good Book | The Well of Lost Plots | Something Rotten | First Among Sequels (due July 2007) | |
| Jack Spratt series | |
| The Big Over Easy | The Fourth Bear | The Last Great Tortoise Race (due 2007) | |
