Early Riser – Jasper Fforde

Every Winter, the human population hibernates.

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
Published in: 2018 (UK)  US release date 2/12/19 (pre-order and/or read Amazon description)
Reviewed by: Nicole
Rating: [★★★]

Jasper Fforde is very clever and I have read (and enjoyed) most of his books.  I took a hiatus from reading him, and coincidentally he took a hiatus from writing.  This is his first post creativity-hiatus novel and it’s what you would expect from Jasper Fforde.  A little too much of what you would expect, as it happens.

This story does not take place in the book world, but the novel is structured similarly.   If you’ve read Fforde you know that means each chapter has a header from a fictional book about the world he’s writing about, and its peppered with footnotes which tend to be humorous, (but for me not humorous enough to disrupt the story, so I ended up skipping them.)

There is no doubt this book is clever!  A unique take on a “thriller.”  Fun characters, original concepts, and plenty of twists (somewhat predictable) and turns.  I think the novel would have been much more successful without the Fforde structure.  Leave off the headers and footers, and just tell the story.  About 2/3rds of the way through I stopped reading the headers because they just weren’t adding anything to the story and I was starting to wonder if I’d ever finish.  Also, I never laughed which is really unusual for me and a Fforde novel.

Actually, I think this book would be really suited to audio.  With a hot chocolate, and a blanket or 3.

Enjoyable and entertaining, but ultimately a bit disappointing.