Meanwhile, fictional character Yorrick Kaine is loose in Thursday's real world and conspiring with someone in Text Grand Central, the final arbitrators of plot, setting, and other story elements, to release BOOK version 9, code-named UltraWord.

In doing so, she also battles Aornis Hades, the villainess, who nearly converted the world to Dream Topping in Lost in a Good Book, who is present in her memory as a mindworm.

Thursday learns that Harris Tweed, Kaine's partner, is masquerading as a Jurisfiction agent to get UltraWord released, which he states will "fix literature".

At the 923rd Annual BookWorld awards, Thursday demonstrates a variety of issues with UltraWord; it makes books impossible to read more than three times, thus rendering libraries and second-hand bookstores useless, and the quality of the writing is also substantively poorer.

Rich Horton of The SF Site referred to it as "a fast-moving, funny, and intellectually diverting novel"[1] and Dave Golder of SFX stated that "a book this self-consciously clever has no right being so much damned fun" and rated it five stars.