Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron

I love Jasper Fforde's books. I've been looking forward to "Shades of Grey" for months now - and the day I bought it was made even more special in that I was lucky enough to attend a reading and book signing of his. And? He's smart and funny - just like his books. The thing about a Jasper Fforde novel is that you don't need to just suspend your disbelief...you need deny that your disbelief ever existed. Fold it up, tape it shut and put it someplace for safekeeping while you enter a world that is like ours but different in ways you can't imagine and would never expect. Sometimes there will be a Toast Marketing Board, and sometime nursery rhyme characters will be police detectives. And sometime spoons will be one of the most valuable commodities in the world. Sounds quirky, yes. But in an incredibly smart way...where the reader (ok, me) enjoys the 20% of literary/cultural references that are throughout the book but doesn't feel stupid in missing the rest. These worlds end up making a fabulous kind of sense...and one that takes the reader to a much deeper level than expected. "I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind." Eddie Russett, the main character in "Shades of Grey" is our guide to this world, the world that remains after "Something That Happened". Something that led to a social hierarchy that is based upon how much and what kind of color one can see. That led to a world where fear of lightning and giant swans is universal. Where there is a set of Rules that dictate what one wears, who one marries and what one does for a job. "...since one's career path was never decided by ability or intellect, it didn't much matter anyway. Lessons were generally restricted to reading, writing, French, music, geography, sums, cooking and Rule-followment, which meant sitting in a circle and agreeing on how important the rules were. Most pupils referred to the subject as "nodding." Eddie obeys without question...and then he meets Jane Grey. The game changer. The one who gives Eddie his red pill/blue bill moment. After which things will never be the same. This book follows the general path of many post-apocalyptic novels. The reader is given a guide to this new world, a world that has been set up to correct that which was wrong in the old world; a world that may appear idyllic on the surface. And there is some element, some hidden truths that the force in power never wants revealed and will usually resort to evil means to maintain the façade. But this book is different. This book takes a look at the previous world, our world, in a way that is not only insightful, but that is funny. To take a quote from the author on his website, "Irrespective of how bad life can be, there is always humour. Always." True to form, it's not always the kind of hu

It is inevitable that Jasper Fforde will one day write a book that does not crackle with brilliant invention, but this isn't it. This is a marvelous book. Shades of Grey features many of the elements that make Fforde such a delightful and enriching read. It contains the Ffordean indomitable woman, the endearing fish-out-of-water central character, and perhaps most importantly that expertly handled, through-the-looking-glass perspective that rockets Fforde into the literary circle of Douglas Adams and Lewis Carroll. But moreover, in Shades of Grey Fforde demonstrates a new maturity. Other reviewers have alluded to the darkness of this novel, but I'm not sure darkness is apt. The humor, wit, and teasing sense of having a laugh with the reader remains intact. What is different here is depth more than darkness. Edward Russett's journey across the Outer Markers is at one time a delightful romp, a cautionary tale about boat rockers, and a call to action (or at least a healthy boot up the backside against inaction). This is more than wildly fun; it is Swiftian satire, a consistently entertaining, highly readable work of social criticism that veers from preaching whilst landing every blow. Frankly, anyone who doesn't rate this book a five star, no-holds-barred winner should be slated for Reboot no later than Sunday . . . or fed to a yateveo tree.

Oh, how I missed Jasper Fforde! I devoured his Thursday Next series and then the Nursery Crime books, and definitely had mixed feelings when he wrote that his next book would be delayed a year due to the birth of his new daughter. (I understand, really, but I also wanted to read more Fforde!) At last, we have Shades of Grey, and it's both like and unlike anything Fforde has published before. Like, because it gives us a richly imagined world with absurd-sounding details, yet it all hangs together. Unlike, because Shades of Grey is firmly on the side of science fiction whereas his other books I'd call fantasy. It is some unspecified time in the future. An "Epiphany" occurred some hundreds of years in the past - nobody knows what it was - that changed the world. Most people can see only one shade of color - the higher up the spectrum you can see, the higher your social status. Those who can't see colors at all are Greys and are generally a servant class, but not entirely. It is possible to move up and down the social strata through marriage, and children are reclassified by a color test given when they are 20. We meet our hero, Eddie Russett, a Red, as he is being digested by a carnivorous tree, into which he was thrown by Jane, the Grey woman who has turned his life upside down. I spent a large part of the book wondering how this would be resolved, since Eddie is narrating the story and this implies he somehow moved past this fate. We shall see.... As Eddie learns more about how his society works, he has more questions. This does not endear him to the community leaders, since their society is rigidly structured according to the rules laid down by "Munsell" some centuries past. Many of the rules don't make a lot of sense - such as why manufacture of forks is permitted but not spoons - but the populace manages, sometimes finding loopholes in the rules. Despite periodic "Leapbacks", where selected technology is destroyed, some tech remains, such as the self-maintaining Perpetualite roads and the Everspin motors that never slow down. Remnants of the "Previous" are held onto, though often misinterpreted (such as the "Parker Brothers Map of the World", which is a Risk game board.) Eddie's questions and moral development lead him into danger, into confrontation with Jane, and gradual revelation as to what's really going on. It is not all pleasant and Eddie is forced to make extremely difficult choices. Throughout the book Fforde's vision is very colorful, if you'll excuse the term. The level of detail provided is astounding, perplexing and entertaining. As in Fforde's other books, you are simply deposited in the new world without any explanation, and you are expected to pick things up as you go. It is a style similar to CJ Cherryh. Another author I'm reminded of is Matt Ruff, who has a similarly overactive imagination, though his books are typically darker than Fforde's. The end of the book is classic Fforde, however. I don't want to el

9.3.88.32.025: The cucumber and the tomato are both fruit; the avocado is a nut. To assist with the dietary requirements of vegetarians, on the first Tuesday of the month a chicken is officially a vegetable. If you've read and loved Fforde in the past stop right here. There's no need to read this review. Shades of Grey is Fforde at his Ffordy best. Buy, read, enjoy. I really feel that this is one of those books that it's best not to know anything about before you start reading it. But you seem rather committed to reading this review, so I'll continue. It feels like there's a nod to both Brave New World and We (Modern Library Classics), though I've never read anything quite like this. Once again, Fforde takes us into a cleverly devised fictional world, filled with his satire, humor and social commentary. A world where the cause of death could be "mildew", "Nightloss", or accidental beheading by the guillotine at the linoleum factory. Green is the drug of choice, and beige is quite rightly Hell, and I can't even begin to expound upon the Perpetulite. "I'm not a big fact person," said Mr. Crimson, who was honest, even if a twit. "Unproved speculation is more my thing ... " This book is the first in a trilogy. Enjoy.

6.1.02.11.235: Artifiacture from before the Something That Happened may be collected, so long as it does not appear on the Leapback list or possess color above 23 percent saturation. Did you understand that? You would if you were Eddie Russett, the 20-year-old, first-person narrator of Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron. Eddie knows that the above is one of Munsell's innumerable Rules. "The Word of Munsell was the Rules, and the Rules were the Word of Munsell. They regulated everything we did, and had brought peace to the Collective for nearly four centuries. They were sometimes very odd indeed: The banning of the number that lay between 72 and 74 was a case in point, and no one had ever fully explained why it was forbidden to count sheep, make any new spoons or use acronyms. But they were the Rules..." Not surprisingly, this is a society that has embraced "loopholery" enthusiastically. Eddie's society is a Colortocracy, where social status isn't determined by merit or by birth, it's determined by which color(s) of the spectrum you can see, and how much of them. Eddie's a Red, which is next to lowest on the totem pole. Oranges are higher than Reds, Yellows higher than Oranges, and so on. The only ones lower than Reds are the Greys, or achromatics. They can't see any color at all. They're the unappreciated workers of this society. In Shades of Grey, Jasper Fforde has created a richly imagined future that revolves entirely around color, and the perception of it. Explains Eddie, "No one could cheat the Colorman and the color test. What you got was what you were, forever. Your life, career and social standing decided right there and then, and all worrisome life uncertainties eradicated forever. You knew who you were, what you would do, where you would go and what was expected of you." As the novel opens, Eddie doesn't want much from life. He wants to fulfill his Civil Obligations as best he can. He wants to marry into the prestigious Oxblood family. And he does have a few fairly radical ideas about improved ways to queue. Other than that, he wants to avoid the perils of swans, lightning, and mildew. But that's before he travels for the first time in his life, to the Outer Fringes, where the Rules are interpreted differently. Eddie's a fish out of water, and we're meeting people and learning about life in the village of East Carmine right along with him. It is there that Eddie meets an intriguing Grey named Jane. He's smitten immediately, and that's even before she threatens to kill him. Jane, rude in a world without rudeness, violent in world without violence, leads Eddie gradually down a path that has him questioning everything he thought he knew about the Colortocracy--in a world that most definitely does not value questions or those that ask them. By now, you may have gathered that this novel is a bit of a departure for Fforde. There is so much going on that it's hard to take it all in, and virtually impossible