From the bestselling author of Thursday Next—a brilliant new novel about a world where social order and destiny are dictated by the colors you c...
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Oct 28, 2011
mark
rated it: 
the world of Shades of Grey is a nightmarish dystopia: a ruthless totalitarian regime that destroys all individualistic spirit, all creativity and ambiguity and questioning of authority; a monstrous government that divides its citizens into color-based class/caste systems that based upon the inherent physical deficiencies of its populace; a place with no love and where death is the end result for the underdog and misfit.
sounds pretty bleak, right? well, dear reader, think again! this More...
sounds pretty bleak, right? well, dear reader, think again! this More...
14 comments
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(23 people liked it)
Oct 03, 2010
Deb
rated it:
Fforde is a satiric word-weaver and I always look forward to reading whatever he pumps out. Thursday Next is my literary hero, and while the Nursery Crime books weren't up to snuff, they weren't bad--just not as interesting as a dashing, cheese-smuggling book jumper.
Shades of Grey is the beginning of a new dystopian trilogy situated in Chromatocia, a world ruled by the Colortocracy where color perception has faded and social hierarchy is determined by what colors you can see. Edward More...
Shades of Grey is the beginning of a new dystopian trilogy situated in Chromatocia, a world ruled by the Colortocracy where color perception has faded and social hierarchy is determined by what colors you can see. Edward More...
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(18 people liked it)
May 01, 2011
Isamlq
rated it: 
“What did he just say?” I think this was a constant reaction from me given that this is my first Fforde novel. And, boy did I slow down my pace. I even put it down a couple of times to get the details straight, EVEN SO: Shades Of Grey is worth it.
Eddie and his world are definitely quirky, different and funny! He simply wants to marry Constance and get a good job; first he must go to the Outer Fringe to conduct a chair census. On his way, he and his father meet a Grey camouflaged a More...
Eddie and his world are definitely quirky, different and funny! He simply wants to marry Constance and get a good job; first he must go to the Outer Fringe to conduct a chair census. On his way, he and his father meet a Grey camouflaged a More...
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(6 people liked it)
Jan 28, 2011
Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron is Jasper Fforde at his weirdest. It contains a delightfully bizarre and humorous look at a post-apocalyptic world hundreds (if not thousands...the timeline is a bit vague) years in the future where a future species of "human" lives in a society structured on ones ability to see color. The people of this world are largely colorblind or have limited monochromatic vision or (at best) dichromatic vision. The better you can see your specific color,
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Mar 13, 2010
JG (The Introverted Reader)
rated it:
In the future, after the Something That Happened, people's places in society are determined by the color they can see. Purples are the ruling class and Greys are sort of the untouchables. Eddie Russett is a bit of a rogue. He thought of a new idea for queuing and new ideas are frowned upon. After a prank, he is sent to live on the Outer Fringes, where he meets Jane, a Grey with a bewitchingly retroussé nose and a reputation for violence. His fascination with Jane leads him to start question
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6 comments
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(6 people liked it)
Sep 15, 2010
Aphie
rated it:
This is Jasper Fforde.
That means it's silly, not necessarily groundbreaking, but certainly satirical, dark-edged, referential and post-modern in ways that will only work if you're capable of tripping lightly along in his wake, enjoying the view and grinning wryly at the social commentary and broader themes he's sketching on the horizon for you.
I always find the start of a new Fforde novel a bit like that first dive into cold water on a warm day. It's shocking and disorientating More...
That means it's silly, not necessarily groundbreaking, but certainly satirical, dark-edged, referential and post-modern in ways that will only work if you're capable of tripping lightly along in his wake, enjoying the view and grinning wryly at the social commentary and broader themes he's sketching on the horizon for you.
I always find the start of a new Fforde novel a bit like that first dive into cold water on a warm day. It's shocking and disorientating More...
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(11 people liked it)
Apr 10, 2011
Yvonne
rated it:
Shades of Grey by Japer Fforde is a very different novel from what I expected. Set in a world 500 years from now but somehow in the 1950's it is a world where everything is defined by colour. Status, work and who you can marry is all about what colour you can see. Every other colour is just shades of grey. So much is lost in this future world. The main protagonist, Eddie gets a tour of an empty library and is shown where the books used to be. Paintings are valued, the artists are remembered but
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(2 people liked it)
Mar 05, 2010
Anna
rated it:
At the beginning of this novel, Eddie Russet is, for lack of better words, innocent and happy. He lives in a Colourtocracy ; people are high or low in the society depending on what colour they can see, and how much they can see it. He has yet to be tested to know for sure how much Red (his colour) he can see, but he's pretty sure he can see a lot, and he hopes to marry a pretty insufferable girl who belongs to a powerful Red family.
An innocent prank sends him to another town, East C More...
An innocent prank sends him to another town, East C More...
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(1 person liked it)
Oct 29, 2011
prettybooks
rated it:
“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.”
I was immediately blown away by how realistic, original and detailed the world in Shades of Grey was. In this dystopian society, social hierarchy is determined by an individual’s perception of colour. Eddie Russet is a Red – only second from the bottom of the hierarchy. He, like others, cannot More...
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(2 people liked it)
Jan 20, 2010
Joseph
rated it: 
Fforde has created another most illogically logical, or logically illogical world, just like he did with his great Thursday Next series. However you look at it, this new world is more bizarre than Lewis Carroll's mad Wonderland and L. Frank Baum's colorful Oz combined. Mix in a bit of the dystopian worlds created by Lois Lowry in The Giver and Gathering Blue and you get this amazing book. A story of a future where the rules of living are based on color. Not the color of a person's skin, but
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(7 people liked it)
Aug 06, 2011
There's something rotten in East Carmine. People are dying in suspicious circumstances. It is clear that a cover-up is taking place, but by whom and for what reason? And why does no one want to go to High saffron?
This brand new series from Jasper is set in a post apocalyptic world, several hundred years into the future, where the survivors live by a class system determined by the colours they can perceive. This is the world of the partially or even totally colour-blind.
They also live by th More...
This brand new series from Jasper is set in a post apocalyptic world, several hundred years into the future, where the survivors live by a class system determined by the colours they can perceive. This is the world of the partially or even totally colour-blind.
They also live by th More...
Aug 02, 2011
Don't read this book. Seriously. Wait until nos. 2 & 3 in the projected series have come out, then take yourself off to a beach or a comfy sofa somewhere for the weekend and just blow through them all in one great binge, because it will take so much concentration and devotion to keep up with the stunning intricacies of Fforde's latest that it's wasted effort not to just immerse for a bit. Trust me, I've read everything he's written, and despite my usual sense of trepidation when faced with a new
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(3 people liked it)
Aug 03, 2010
But where besides North Korea and a few other pariah states would "Shades of Grey" make anyone see red nowadays?
The level of suspense is so tepid that from hundreds of pages away, you can hear Charlton Heston yelling, "Soylent Green is people! We've got to stop them somehow!" To be fair, part of the problem is timing. We've already read "1984" and "Harrison Bergeron" and "Fahrenheit 451" and a dozen other trenchant satirical assaults More...
The level of suspense is so tepid that from hundreds of pages away, you can hear Charlton Heston yelling, "Soylent Green is people! We've got to stop them somehow!" To be fair, part of the problem is timing. We've already read "1984" and "Harrison Bergeron" and "Fahrenheit 451" and a dozen other trenchant satirical assaults More...
Feb 11, 2012
Jenny
rated it:
It takes a while to get into it, but this is one of the most original post-apocalyptic novels I’ve ever encountered. It’s fascinating and funny, as funny as Fforde’s earlier novels set between the pages of books.
In this world, everyone is color-blind, and status accrues to people according to what part of the spectrum they can see. The Purples, at the top, boss everyone else around, and the Greys, at the bottom, are the servants and workers. It’s about five hundred years after So More...
In this world, everyone is color-blind, and status accrues to people according to what part of the spectrum they can see. The Purples, at the top, boss everyone else around, and the Greys, at the bottom, are the servants and workers. It’s about five hundred years after So More...
Jan 28, 2012
Becky
rated it:
Maybe 3.5 stars (but only because this novel is outside my normal reading comfort zone and the plot does drag just a tiny bit in places)
In a setting some hundreds of years into a warmer, technologically-backward future, the “Something That Happened” has led to a society where everyone has some degree of colorblindness though status is determined by color perception. The result is a hierarchical society where the least color-perceptive perform all the lowly jobs and those who can perc More...
In a setting some hundreds of years into a warmer, technologically-backward future, the “Something That Happened” has led to a society where everyone has some degree of colorblindness though status is determined by color perception. The result is a hierarchical society where the least color-perceptive perform all the lowly jobs and those who can perc More...
Jan 02, 2012
Michele
rated it:
This book was a great read - light and engaging, each chapter leaving the reader eager to see what happens in the next. Shades of Grey is set in a post-cataclysmic world that correlates to our own just enough to give us a sense of familiarity, but without ever losing its other-worldliness. Fforde does a great job of exploring this weird world through the Protagonist's eyes; we receive explanations for new terms, objects, or concepts at a metered pace, and occasionally, we receive no explanatio
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Nov 01, 2011
Mike
rated it:
There's a particular style of writing (I'll call it "Kafka comedy") where the soul-crushing press of bureaucracy and/or social correctness and its withering effect on the human will is mined for its inherent humor. Lots of writers (and notably recent sci-fi/fantasy writers from the UK) dabble in this style, but the only other book that I can think of that is devoted to it as thoroughly and successfully as Shades of Grey is Catch-22. The comparison is hardly fair: Heller's book is an
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Oct 20, 2011
Lavonne
rated it:
I am a big Jasper Fforde fan. I enjoyed the Nursery Rhyme series immensely and I adore Thursday Next. Still, I couldn’t get very excited about “Shades of Grey”. A book about a culture ruled by what colors can be seen by individuals? It seemed so far from Fforde’s usual subjects that I couldn’t imagine that it was going to be something I enjoyed. I picked up the audio book at the library and started in, not expecting much. I was immediately swept away into Chromatiacian society, with its yateveo
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Oct 17, 2011
Meadow
rated it:
I read this book about a year ago, and now have just finished re-reading it. It is a story of a color blind 'distopia' - a society that is strictly regulated "for the good of the Collective." When I say color blind, I don't mean a metaphor, I mean the status of the people in the Collective is literally based on what percentage of certain colors they can see.
Jasper Fforde has created a fascinating world where social prejudice and mysteries abound, and I found myself really More...
Jasper Fforde has created a fascinating world where social prejudice and mysteries abound, and I found myself really More...
Oct 04, 2011
Part social satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, Shades of Grey tells of a battle against overwhelming odds. In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means.
Eddie's world wasn't always like this. There's evi More...
Eddie's world wasn't always like this. There's evi More...
Oct 02, 2011
Annyaraz
rated it:
Als ich mit dem Buch angefangen habe, hatte ich keine Ahnung, worauf ich mich einlasse. Der Autor sagte mir bis dato gar nichts, nur das Cover hat mich sofort in seinen Bann gezogen. Umso erstaunter war ich dann, als mir allmählich aufging, worum es eigentlich geht. Der Plot ist so vielschichtig, dass ich mich darauf zu Anfang gar nicht richtig konzentrieren konnte, weil ich zu sehr damit beschäftigt war, mich in diese genial ersponnene Welt reinzudenken. Die ersten paar Kapitel fühlte ich mich
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Oct 01, 2011
Jackie
rated it:
How do I know a book was really good? When I start missing it as soon as its over. And want to reread it immediately. And get a little blast of hope that there are more in the series. And a big dose of disappointment when I find out they haven't been released. And I go to the book's webpage and click all the links and read all the trivia and all the book reviews. If you want to know what this book is about there are better descriptions and reviews than mine. I confess I heard about this book on
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Sep 17, 2011
Mei-Lu
rated it:
I read genre fiction because I like to be surprised, I like leftfield ideas. But this book is seriously one of the most leftfield books I've ever read. I've tried to explain the concept of this book to other people and had them look at me as if I suddenly had begun speaking in Klingon (God, I hate it when that happens, don't you?) It's set in a futuristic, dystopian world that owes a little bit to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. In this world (which *might* be Oz, but with more English acce
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Sep 07, 2011
Steve
rated it: 
Surely, there's more to writing a book than simply having a good idea?
This book is based on a good idea, but it reads like it was written by a computer programme and commissioned by that bloke in Marketing who seems to have a new car every other month.
It's so damn clunky. The sentences are twistier than a twisty thing, the narrative structure was arrived at using one of those foldy-paper-fingers-things and the jokes were designed by the same committee that came up with th More...
This book is based on a good idea, but it reads like it was written by a computer programme and commissioned by that bloke in Marketing who seems to have a new car every other month.
It's so damn clunky. The sentences are twistier than a twisty thing, the narrative structure was arrived at using one of those foldy-paper-fingers-things and the jokes were designed by the same committee that came up with th More...
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(2 people liked it)
Sep 06, 2011
Alex
rated it:
This book (thankfully denoted as “A Novel” for those of us that don’t know how books work) is a departure from Jasper Fforde‘s popular Thrusday Next series. Instead of being based on an alternate England where literature crosses over with reality, Shades of Grey is the story of an alternate England where color perception denotes your social standing. There is a Colortocracy in place and it ensures that everybody is kept in their right place. Purples (those that can see, well, purple) are at an a
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Sep 07, 2011
Becky
rated it:
this book starts out quite slow. DONT BE FOOLED! It becomes increasingly hard to put down! The mono-coloured world Fforde presents to the reader is exciting, dangerous and somewhat tragic, but is painted beautifully into our imaginations by an excellent writer. I wasnt expecting it to be quite so funny, having never read anything by Fforde before, and I was more than pleasenly surprised at the laugh out loud moments. Also I loved that every chapter was headed with another seemingly pointless yet
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Aug 23, 2011
Thea
rated it:
If Lewis Carroll had written 1984 while dropping copious amounts of LSD after reading The Communist Manifesto, the result would have been this book. Absurd and satiric, this is dystopia as you've never seen it before. Fforde's synesthetic prose, with its lush, nonstop focus on color induces a dizzying sensory overload that borders on overwhelming; I've always been a visual person, so there were quite a few times when I had to close my eyes for a bit in order to catch a break. The story is driven
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Aug 13, 2011
Michele
rated it:
An inventive take on a post-apocalyptic novel. The hyper organized citizens of Chromatica live in future time, after The Something That Happened destroyed the Previous (the people who used to live in the land.) All community and private life is ordered by the infallible Rules put in place by "our Mansell," whose Epiphany marked the beginning of Chromatica. In this new world order, status depends on one's degree of color sensitivity. Each separate group sees one color only, and the mo
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Aug 09, 2011
procrastin8or
rated it: 
I wanted to like this, I really did. I am a big fan of Jasper Fforde and his clever method of mixing mundane storylines with a hefty dose of the bizarre. It is this formula that has given him success in the 'Thursday Next' and 'Nursery Crime' series. So when I found this novel with its interesting blurb I felt I had to get it.
Here is a world from which all colour has been removed, everything is coloured by artificial means by devices that look like fire hydrants. Furthermore, it seems that peopl More...
Here is a world from which all colour has been removed, everything is coloured by artificial means by devices that look like fire hydrants. Furthermore, it seems that peopl More...
Jun 27, 2011
Kathi
rated it:
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