Book Detail

I asked for recommendation for something clever to read.  Some of your recommended I try a guy named Fforde.  The Eyre Affair.

Right!

I'm a quarter of the way in.  Not what I expected, but still good. Set in England in the mid 80s, and the Crimean War has been going on for 130+ years.  Heh.  Parallel universe type stuff.  I'm liking it so far

The main character is a special operative law enforcement type.  She gets bumped upstairs to more exciting work . (Read:  dangerous...)  And expecting trouble her supervisor provides were with AWFUL, horrible, beyond-the-pale immoral ammunition for her pistol to help her get an edge over an extra dangerous quarry.

She could get fired if Internal Affairs catches here with it!  Fired, if she is lucky.  The existence of said items is practically a Crime Against Humanity, is how they act. 

What kind of ammo?  Regular self-defense ammo.  'Holler points,' we might say.

Ok ok, I am cutting the author some slack.  He is British, after all.  Writing in 2001.  Regular folks in America aren't tuned in to what self defense ammo does and is for.  So regular folks in England are even further behind.  Plus, parallel universe.  Lots of things go wonky when you introduce that level of fantasy, so getting a slight case of the vapors over what is essentially Federal Hyrda-Shoks could even be intentional.  Like most gunnies, I roll my eyes a little bit and just read on, going with it.  But I put the histrionics here because I need the fodder.

I don't let it put me off my feed.  Get this, the main character is named Thursday Next.  She has a pet dodo (cloned extinct specimens... everyone has one as a pet there days!) and her career path up to this point in Special Ops is tracking down literature crime.

As I said, I am not regretting picking this up.