{"id":20884,"date":"2025-07-04T20:07:56","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T00:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20884"},"modified":"2025-07-04T20:07:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T00:07:56","slug":"lost-on-a-page-by-david-e-sharp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20884","title":{"rendered":"‘Lost On a Page,’ by David E. Sharp"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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[In case you\u2019ve been wondering how my left eye is doing, post-surgery (cataract), I woke up this morning with clearer vision that I\u2019d had when I went to bed. I believe it\u2019s now better than it was then \u2013 but such things are hard to judge when the progress is slow. My retina surgeon led me to believe I\u2019ll have permanent diminished sight, but the cataract guy thought he could restore it substantially. I await the final resolution of this contest of expertise.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew this one <\/strong>was going to be strange, but it looked like it could be fun. And I guess it was, more or less. David E. Sharp\u2019s Lost on a Page<\/a><\/em> is a literary fantasy, in which characters from different genres interact, fighting and making alliances in a struggle against their own authors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We meet Joe Slade as a hardboiled private eye in a typical urban nighttime setting, when he gets lured into chasing a strange group of people. They lead him into a library (or bookstore, I forget which), and somewhere in a maze of shelves they pass through a portal into a library in another world. There his new acquaintances reveal themselves to be an elf, a dwarf, and a wizardess. They reveal their discovery that they are characters in fictional fantasy stories, and they have decided to invade the World Where Books Are Made, to get revenge on their author for all the awful things he\u2019s put them through. They\u2019ve read Joe\u2019s stories, and consider him just the ally they need for this violent job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they jump from fictional universe to fictional universe, they\u2019ll find themselves in a Regency romance, a space travel story, and a zombie apocalypse novel. They\u2019ll learn that there are things that the rules of fiction won\u2019t permit them to do, and that different powers work differently in different worlds. And, of course, love with blossom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lost On a Page<\/em> was a creative and original book, and amusing in places. I enjoyed the author\u2019s self-mockery as the characters complained about their working conditions. However, I think the author also bit off more than he could chew. The book was awfully complicated, with settings and rules changing from scenario to scenario. And the author\u2019s vocabulary wasn’t up to his challenges. For instance, when they jumped into the Regency romance, he tried to adopt the literary style of such books, with unhappy results: \u201cAny afficionado would lecture this was a wine to be savored slowly and to which one should pay great homage.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I finished the book, but it annoyed me. You might like it, though, especially if you\u2019re a Jasper Fforde fan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[In case you\u2019ve been wondering how my left eye is doing, post-surgery (cataract), I woke up this morning with clearer vision that I\u2019d had when I went to bed. I believe it\u2019s now better than it was then \u2013 but such things are hard to judge when the progress is slow. My retina surgeon led … Continue reading ‘Lost On a Page,’ by David E. Sharp<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5618,5619],"class_list":["post-20884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-david-e-sharp","tag-lost-on-a-page"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20884"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20887,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20884\/revisions\/20887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}