A disappointment despite a very promising beginning ... 3 * ½

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I was looking forward to discover what Jasper Fforde, which I loved The Eyre Affair, had concocted for youth. The very beginning of the book did not disappoint my expectations, funny and irreverent tone, luxury back ground details, promising characters, it seemed a good start.
Alas, I have read and I never saw it coming!

The setting is excellent, but it is not subject to any story, or rather a frame too simple and linear. The backdrop, carefully nourished anecdotes, not the screen story. Instead, I soon felt that the plot of the story was a pretext for highlight the spirit and ingenuity of the author. All those little details are found and fun, but are very numerous, repetitive and mostly free in abundance "catalog", leading to almost never does anything. It is not unpleasant, but it left me a tenacious impression of superficiality (whereas the absurd charm me completely in my reading as a rule).

Meanwhile the characters are forgotten, their profiles quickly sketched in the first pages do not change, I found it very frustrating. Also the main character, a precocious young girl sensibly and mature 15 years, behaves like an adult thirty years. The 11 year old boy made good 4 or 5 more, their alleged age rings false.

Similarly, while the author throws spiritual spread over absurdities, he forgets to describe certain things, like quarkon, which never took shape, which I found very annoying.
Finally I felt a great void at the end of my reading, a lavish screen printing but sounds hollow, and the casualness of the author for the conduct of his youth history (it has not even been able to resist the temptation to sacrifice the secondary character endearing, shame on _him_, the "trick" that gives me the creeps and that a talented writer should know to happen) made me very disappointed ...

(Last recrimination: the cover illustration is "fashion" but is completely ridiculous for this story, giving no idea of ​​the tone of the narrative)