Shades Of Grey

God. It was difficult to read in the beginning because the set up of the story world wasn't clear, and I got the names of the characters mixed up along the way. Other than that it was an exciting read, although the pace of the book was slow. The pay-off wasn't that fantastic but it was an amazing read because of the imagination and thought put into it.

When I first started reading this book, I realized that I forgot how hard it is to wrap my brain around the worlds that Jasper Fforde creates in his books. But once I understood Chromatacia, I was mesmerized again. Fforde crafts amazingly logical yet absurd societies. I really appreciate how everything fits together. And I was intrigued by this chromatic society and gripped by the characters and story. This is supposed to be a trilogy, although the other two books never came out. I hope they do one day, as I am definitely wanting more.

For those of you who follow along with my book reviews, you might remember that I've sort of been on a string of dark novels. So, when I was looking to pick my next book, I was hoping for something a bit lighter, and also something that wasn't part of a series. I LOVED Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, so I thought this book (Shades of Grey) might be just the ticket.

This book takes place in a dystopian future, after “Something” has happened. Essentially, take your typical sci-fi dystopia, now make it British. And slightly absurd. Everyone's worth and place in society is based on the colors you can see. There is a set of Rules that everyone must follow, even if they make no sense. This is one of those books where you just jump into the middle of the world with our protagonist, and have to piece things together as you go along.

I have to admit, it took me a bit to get into this book. In part, probably, because it was darker and less funny than I was hoping for initially. It is...witty? Clever? Amusing? But it didn't really make me laugh. And it took a while to gather all the breadcrumbs about what is happening in this world and put it together into a coherent story. But I did get there, and by the end I was interested and invested in the characters. If absurdist/witty dystopia sounds like your cup of tea, this is a great book for you. Otherwise, let me STRONGLY recommend the Thursday Next series (first book is The Eyre Affair).

3.5

Many years in the future, Eddie, a Red, lives in a “colortacracy” where he is on the lower end of the caste system, but at least he's above the greys. Your designation is determined by what color you can see, and this has all sorts of implications for what work you can do, who you can court and marry (color theory comes into play here), and how you treat and think about about other colors. Eddie and his father need to visit a town in the fringes for new, temporary assignments. Eddie, who is quite a stickler for the many rules that so strictly guide decorum, learns that the code book and points system get much less care here than in the big city. In fact, he learns many new things.

There's a few initial questions the book explores and since I was quite confused at the beginning, these were my hooks that kept me going. This really is an amazing book, pretty groundbreaking and I really would like to read it with eyes another time since I missed a lot of the humor and intricacies.

If you want a wowzer of a world or a book that says something, I recommend. It has extreme worldbuilding that never felt info dumpy (even though maybe it is). The audiobook is excellent, but I do NOT recommend it if you cannot dedicate 100% of your attention to the story. The worldbuilding is just too detailed.

I'm seriously impressed by this book. The truly bizarre and unique scenario is elaborated in considerable detail with endless creative imagination; the plot has many twists and turns. I come out of it feeling that it easily deserves five stars.

However, in practice, I rarely reread it, and I have difficulty in persuading myself to reread it, because the scenario is dystopian, and I don't like reading about dystopias. So my four-star rating is a compromise between my perception of five-star excellence and my three-star infrequency of rereading.

As far as I know, there's no connection between this and Jasper Fforde's earlier books.

Characterization is mostly lightweight but at least varied. The first-person protagonist, Eddie Russett, is on the whole a fairly standard Decent Chap, who finds in the course of the story that he has to re-evaluate much of what he thought he knew about his world.

The bad-tempered and dangerous Jane Grey is the most interesting character, and this book doesn't completely reveal what she's up to: a couple of sequels are promised, and I suppose she hasn't finished surprising us yet.

The story gradually reveals some of the secrets behind the scenario, but plenty of important secrets remain hidden, and without more information I still can't tell whether this is fantasy or science fiction; although it's clearly set centuries in our future. It's a serious story in which seriously bad things are happening, and yet there are details that are often deliberately amusing. So it could perhaps be described as a comedy-thriller.

The scenario involves a society operating by strict and detailed Rules. For example:

“The ‘Standard Variable' procedure was in place to allow very minor changes of the Rules. The most obvious example was the ‘Children under ten are to be given a glass of milk and a smack at 11 a.m.' rule, which for almost two hundred years was interpreted as the literal Word of Munsell, and children were given the glass of milk, and then clipped around the ear. It took a brave Prefect to point out – tactfully, of course – that this was doubtless a spelling mistake, and should have read ‘snack'. It was blamed on a scribe's error rather than Rule Fallibility and the Variable was adopted.”

This Rules-driven society has a class system based on colour perception. The people all have defective colour vision, often able to see only one colour; and some colours carry higher status than others. People with little or no colour perception (Greys) are at the bottom of the heap, treated with disdain and required to work as manual labourers or servants.

If you think you understand the scenario from this brief description, you're wrong. It may sound a bit weird, but trust me, it's much weirder than that.

Considering that this is the first part of a trilogy, it has a fairly satisfactory ending: we clearly come to the end of the first part of the story. But I'd really like to know what happens next.