Summerbook #9: Early Riser

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 Early Riser, by Jasper Fforde

Here's another donation table title that's been sitting around too long.  (I'm going to go put all of these in the local Little Free Library, since the booksale is on hiatus at the moment.)  I love Fforde's Thursday Next series -- did you see a new and final one is coming out? -- but I wasn't sure what to make of this one and had a vague feeling that it was one of the Nursery Crimes series, which it is not.  It's a stand-alone.

On an alternate Earth where ice ages have never ended, humanity has evolved to deal with the bone-chilling winter months by hibernating.  Pretty much everyone bunks down in dormitoria of ancient design, watched over by the few willing (or necessitated) to stay awake through the dangerous winter.  These porters, consuls, and others are supposed to protect the sleepers from the cold, the Villains who wish to plunder, and the legendary (?) Wintervolk who may plan to suck the marrow from your bones.  It's important to bulk up for the winter sleep; some people starve and never awaken.  The corporation HiberTech has developed a medication, Morphenox, which helps stave off starvation, but users may wake up as nightwalkers, hungry mindl andess.  

Charlie Worthing is on his first winter as a Consul, a sleep-guarding soldier, and though he's supposed to be in nice safe Cardiff, he winds up in Talgarth, a wild and dangerous sector near HiberTech's HQ.  Between his boss, who is also another person, the lovely artist Birgitta, the maybe-legendary Gronk (who eats you and leaves your clothes neatly folded), and many other interesting folks, Charlie is a confused and hapless newbie, and then he starts hearing about the viral dream, featuring a blue Buick.  Can there be such a thing as a viral dream?  And then Charlie starts having the dream himself...

It's a comedy of sorts, if a dark one featuring a lot of death and dismemberment.  Perhaps surreal fiction is a better term -- Fforde's characteristic absurdism and worldbuilding make for a very good story, albeit one you'll be grateful not to live in.  

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