Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair

I borrowed this because I felt in the mood for something fluffy and fun to read, but Fforde turns out to be less frothy and somewhat heavier than I'd anticipated. I'm not sure what it is - the ideas are whimsical and clever (and times, perhaps rather too clever-clever but it comes with the territory) and the whole concept is very enticing (a genuinely literary detective in a world parallel to our own but far more literary in many sense of the word, diverse alarums), so I don't know, maybe it's that the writing itself doesn't express the playfulness and delight that one feels must underlie it all, which itself may be down to the actually crimes and other bad things that happen throughout. Still, The Eyre Affair shows enough that, coupled with Tamara's promise that it's the weakest in the series (I started with it because it's the first), I'll likely track down at least the next.