Something Rotten
Encyclopedia
Something Rotten is the fourth
book in the Thursday Next
series by Jasper Fforde
. It continues the story some two years after the point where The Well of Lost Plots
leaves off.
that Fforde introduced in The Eyre Affair
; she is accompanied by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
, whose excursion from the world of fiction with Thursday forms the main sub-plot.
The title is taken from Hamlet I.iv: "Something is rotten in the State of Denmark", an oft-used snowclone
.
that escaped in the last book; she is tiring of fiction, however, and longs to return to her own world and get back her husband Landen, who was removed from time by the evil Goliath Corporation in 1947. Despite Landen's non-existence, Thursday still has her son (Friday Next) who is now two years old.
Thursday and Friday return to her mother (Wednesday) in Swindon, with Hamlet
who is accompanying them on an excursion to the "Outland" to find out what people in the real world think of him. Her mother, whose main functions appear to be to make tea and to provide Battenburg cake, has some curious house guests: Emma Hamilton, Otto von Bismarck
, and a family of dodo
s. Both humans are apparently staying for a rest, while Thursday's father (who has now been re-admitted to the time-travelling ChronoGuard) sorts out various parts of history for them.
Despite her earlier transgressions that caused her to flee to the Bookworld in the first place, Thursday gets her job back at SpecOps
-27 as a Literary Detective and catches up with her old colleagues. She learns that in her absence, Yorrick Kaine has joined forces with Goliath Corporation and plans to oust the aging English President George Formby. As Prime Minister, Kaine wields some mysterious persuasive influence over Parliament and the people, and has used it to pass some bizarre laws and to stir up hatred of Denmark
. Yorrick has also taken out a hit on her: he has hired an assassin known as "The Windowmaker", who is actually Cindy Stoker, the wife of Thursday's longtime friend, Spike.
Thursday's father warns her that Kaine's ambitions may cause nuclear armageddon and that it is up to her to stop him. On top of this, she is visited by tearful agents from the Bookworld (Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Emperor Zhark) who tell her that all sorts of things are going wrong without her leadership'; for starters, without its titular character, the play Hamlet
has merged with The Merry Wives of Windsor
creating a new play called "The Merry Wives of Elsinore", which is not nearly as good as either original play (in the words of Emperor Zhark, "it takes a long time to get funny, and, when it finally does, everyone dies"). Meanwhile, her most pressing problem is finding reliable childcare for Friday.
Goliath Corporation have decided to become the new world religion to avoid a prophecy (the prophecy states that the Goliath Corporation will fall; Goliath believes that converting itself into a religion will exempt it from destruction, as the prophecy specifies a business). Thursday meets the CEO -- at their headquarters in the Isle of Man
-- and gets a promise that they will un-eradicate Landen in exchange for her forgiveness. Thursday feels duped when she finds that, through some form of mind control, she has formally forgiven them, even though there is no sign of her husband. Then suddenly he is back, but takes a while to stabilize. Thursday must wait patiently for his un-eradication to "stick". In the meantime, she embarks on several seemingly impossible tasks, which include smuggling ten truckloads of banned Danish literature into Wales, tracking down an illegal clone of William Shakespeare, and teaching Friday to speak properly.
On top of all of this, Thursday still has to help the Swindon Mallets win the 1988 Croquet Superhoop final in order to thwart Kaine and Goliath and avoid the impending end of the world (as foretold by the aforementioned prophecy).
She succeeds but not without a near-death experience and a visit to the gateway to the Underworld (which turns out to be a planned-but-never-built service station on the M4 motorway
). The final chapters contain some curious time
paradoxes in which Thursday finds that she has met herself at several other stages in her own lifespan, including one character which had seemed to be an independent character.
book in the Thursday Next
Thursday Next
Thursday Next is the main protagonist in a series of comic fantasy, alternate history novels by the British author Jasper Fforde. She was first introduced in Fforde's first published novel, The Eyre Affair, released on July 19, 2001 by Hodder & Stoughton. , the series comprises six books, in two...
series by Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde is a British novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written several books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series and begun two more independent series: The Last Dragonslayer...
. It continues the story some two years after the point where The Well of Lost Plots
The Well of Lost Plots
The Well of Lost Plots is the third book by Jasper Fforde and the continuation of the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next from The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book...
leaves off.
Plot introduction
The book sees Thursday return from the world of fiction to the alternative SwindonSwindon
Swindon is a large town within the borough of Swindon and ceremonial county of Wiltshire, in South West England. It is midway between Bristol, west and Reading, east. London is east...
that Fforde introduced in The Eyre Affair
The Eyre Affair
The Eyre Affair is the first published novel by English author Jasper Fforde, released by Hodder and Stoughton in 2001. It takes place in alternative 1985, where literary detective Thursday Next pursues a master criminal through the world of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.-Plot summary:In a parallel...
; she is accompanied by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
, whose excursion from the world of fiction with Thursday forms the main sub-plot.
The title is taken from Hamlet I.iv: "Something is rotten in the State of Denmark", an oft-used snowclone
Snowclone
A snowclone is a type of cliché and phrasal template originally defined as "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different variants"....
.
Plot summary
The story opens with Thursday still in the world of fiction in her job as the Bellman, head of the literary police force Jurisfiction. She is still hunting the MinotaurMinotaur
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur , as the Greeks imagined him, was a creature with the head of a bull on the body of a man or, as described by Roman poet Ovid, "part man and part bull"...
that escaped in the last book; she is tiring of fiction, however, and longs to return to her own world and get back her husband Landen, who was removed from time by the evil Goliath Corporation in 1947. Despite Landen's non-existence, Thursday still has her son (Friday Next) who is now two years old.
Thursday and Friday return to her mother (Wednesday) in Swindon, with Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
who is accompanying them on an excursion to the "Outland" to find out what people in the real world think of him. Her mother, whose main functions appear to be to make tea and to provide Battenburg cake, has some curious house guests: Emma Hamilton, Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
, and a family of dodo
Dodo
The dodo was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Related to pigeons and doves, it stood about a meter tall, weighing about , living on fruit, and nesting on the ground....
s. Both humans are apparently staying for a rest, while Thursday's father (who has now been re-admitted to the time-travelling ChronoGuard) sorts out various parts of history for them.
Despite her earlier transgressions that caused her to flee to the Bookworld in the first place, Thursday gets her job back at SpecOps
SpecOps
SpecOps is a fictional overarching British governmental force in Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series of novels. It was established in 1928 to handle policing duties "too unusual or too specialized" to be handled by the regular police. The force and divisions are similar in name to the real world...
-27 as a Literary Detective and catches up with her old colleagues. She learns that in her absence, Yorrick Kaine has joined forces with Goliath Corporation and plans to oust the aging English President George Formby. As Prime Minister, Kaine wields some mysterious persuasive influence over Parliament and the people, and has used it to pass some bizarre laws and to stir up hatred of Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
. Yorrick has also taken out a hit on her: he has hired an assassin known as "The Windowmaker", who is actually Cindy Stoker, the wife of Thursday's longtime friend, Spike.
Thursday's father warns her that Kaine's ambitions may cause nuclear armageddon and that it is up to her to stop him. On top of this, she is visited by tearful agents from the Bookworld (Mrs Tiggy-Winkle and Emperor Zhark) who tell her that all sorts of things are going wrong without her leadership'; for starters, without its titular character, the play Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
has merged with The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
creating a new play called "The Merry Wives of Elsinore", which is not nearly as good as either original play (in the words of Emperor Zhark, "it takes a long time to get funny, and, when it finally does, everyone dies"). Meanwhile, her most pressing problem is finding reliable childcare for Friday.
Goliath Corporation have decided to become the new world religion to avoid a prophecy (the prophecy states that the Goliath Corporation will fall; Goliath believes that converting itself into a religion will exempt it from destruction, as the prophecy specifies a business). Thursday meets the CEO -- at their headquarters in the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...
-- and gets a promise that they will un-eradicate Landen in exchange for her forgiveness. Thursday feels duped when she finds that, through some form of mind control, she has formally forgiven them, even though there is no sign of her husband. Then suddenly he is back, but takes a while to stabilize. Thursday must wait patiently for his un-eradication to "stick". In the meantime, she embarks on several seemingly impossible tasks, which include smuggling ten truckloads of banned Danish literature into Wales, tracking down an illegal clone of William Shakespeare, and teaching Friday to speak properly.
On top of all of this, Thursday still has to help the Swindon Mallets win the 1988 Croquet Superhoop final in order to thwart Kaine and Goliath and avoid the impending end of the world (as foretold by the aforementioned prophecy).
She succeeds but not without a near-death experience and a visit to the gateway to the Underworld (which turns out to be a planned-but-never-built service station on the M4 motorway
M4 motorway
The M4 motorway links London with South Wales. It is part of the unsigned European route E30. Other major places directly accessible from M4 junctions are Reading, Swindon, Bristol, Newport, Cardiff and Swansea...
). The final chapters contain some curious time
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
paradoxes in which Thursday finds that she has met herself at several other stages in her own lifespan, including one character which had seemed to be an independent character.