New Release: Shades of Grey

I held out as long as I could, trying to always have one more Jasper Fforde left to read, but as the rave reviews started being posted, I had to crack open Shades of Grey.  I loved it!

Told from the point of view of Eddie Russett, a Red, we are introduced to Chromatacia -- a world (possibly the future of our world) where vision has been changed to the point where individuals only see certain colors or sometimes none at all.  What color you see -- and how much of it -- determines your course in life.  Purples are the leaders and Greys are the manual laborers.  Everyone else falls somewhere in between.

Life in this world is based on a very restrictive set of rules and variance is not tolerated.  When Eddie plays a practical joke on another young man, he and his father are sent on a fool's errand to the fringe town of East Carmine where the rules are not so iron-clad and things that already seemed strange are even stranger than they seem.  Armed only with his natural born color-seeing skill and his spoon, Eddie sets out to do something that is forbidden -- ask questions and learn the truth.

This summary only scratches the surface of this fantastic dystopian comedy.  As with other Fforde novels, wordplay is important and this book will definitely require a re-read for me to catch more of his brilliant details.  The book was a bit confusing at the start because the world operates in such a strange way but it didn't take too long to adjust to.  Eddie is a wonderful character -- a thinker and a non-believer who is learning both the danger and the blessings of knowledge.  I can't wait to continue with his story through the remaining two books that Fforde is planning for this series.  Of course, I hope he manages to resurrect Thursday Next somewhere in there as well.  I miss the old gal.

Rather be grey than yellow any day,
K


Support our site and buy Shades of Grey on Amazon or find it at your local library. We bought our own copy of this book.