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Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey #1)

by Jasper Fforde

4.09 · rating details · 7,493 ratings · 1,641 reviews

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 can see

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 s...more

Hardcover, 390 pages

Published December 29th 2009 by Viking Adult

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Oct 28, 2011

mark monday rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: after-the-fall

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-stratified class/caste systems that is 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 rat...more 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-stratified class/caste systems that is 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 rather amazing novel is as light and airy as a souffle, a real pleasure to consume from beginning to end. i was smiling constantly and laughing out loud nearly as often. the tone is brisk and drily amusing. the plot and the various details of our young hero's travails are wonderfully absurd: the punishment for his past cheekiness is to conduct a "Chair Census"; he must beware deadly carnivorous swans and "mega-fauna"; his greatest ambition is to be the head of a String Factory! upstairs from him and his dad lives the "Apocryphal Man" - an historian the state has deemed 'does not exist', and so is free to wander around naked, stealing food, muttering terrifying truths yet remaining unmolested. the love of his life is mean Jane - a Grey, the lowest caste - a rebel with a cause who does not hesitate to punish him drastically and physically whenever he gets in her way.

the writing itself is splendid. Fforde is a deadpan and satirical author with a perfect grasp of what to show, what to tell, what to keep hidden, and what to save for an exciting climax. i was reminded of several things when reading this book: the equally absurd and distinctly provincial post-apocalyptic settings of Dick's Dr. Bloodmoney and Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, and especially the delightful skewerings of english village life within the Mapp & Lucia series of E.F. Benson. much like the latter, the humor within Shades of Grey is derived almost entirely from the Comedy of Manners.

a Post-Apocalyptic Comedy of Manners set within a Provincial Dystopic Colortocracy! how's that for original?

best of all, for me at least, this wonderful novel does not have a genuinely cynical bone in its body. yes, it skewers hypocrisy and stupidity in the most cutting way. yes, it is about a vicious, cruel future. but it also believes in investing its hero and heroine with the power to change themselves, to fall in love, to try to bravely risk changing the world around them. and it portrays all of the good and all of the bad with the lightest, most charming of touches.

i am really looking forward to the sequel!(less)

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Oct 03, 2010

Deb rated it

Shelves: dystopian-gothic, fiction, favorites

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 Russet, the...more 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 Russet, the narrator, is sent to the Outer Fringes to survey the ratio of chairs to citizens as punishment for a mischievous prank. He quickly discovers that the inviolate rules his society is based on are written on "rubber paper" at times, and that his formerly-rigid acceptance leads to people in high places getting pretty peeved at him. Enough to commit...murder?

Russet meets Jane Grey, a servant with a cute nose (mention its cuteness at the risk of having your eyebrows ripped off) who has anti-Colortocracy leanings and is designated for Reboot, where all unruly citizens go for re-education and re-assignment. Although Russet is already half-engaged to a cold fish back at home, he promptly falls in love with Grey--despite that she threatens to break his jaw or leg and likes to feed him to carnivorous plants whenever convenient.

The bildungsroman element in the book comes to a head near the end, with a quest and a test that lead to more questions than they answer.

There is one All-Important Question that will be answered by the end of the book:
Where have all the spoons gone?

This novel was a slow read at first--Fforde takes time to craft his universes but tends to set his readers down in the middle of things at the beginning, so it took a bit to soak up enough information before the Colortocracy organization made sense. Once everything clicked, though, I couldn't put the book down. The final pages were all action and social un-niceties, the kind of whirlwind ending that makes you long for the sequel in your hands so you can keep the story going and won't have to stop for a year or so. Ah well. Re-reading potential: high!

A sneak peak from one of the last pages:
Volume 2 will be titled Painting by Numbers
Volume 3 will be The Gordini Protocols

On a slightly unrelated note, the Thursday Next series is an octalogy that will continue in March 2011 with One of Our Thursdays is Missing. No word yet on when Painting by Numbers will be released.(less)

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Apr 25, 2011

Isamlq rated it

· review of another edition

“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 as a Purple as...more

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Jan 28, 2011

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For rated it

Shelves: fiction, humor, science-fiction, apocalyptic, dystopia

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, the higher...more 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, the higher your social standing; the shorter the wavelength of your spectrum, the higher your social standing (following the rainbow prism of ROYGBIV, red is the low end and violet is the high end). The system itself is one of thousands upon thousands of often nonsensical rules which all must follow for the good of the collective. Into this world steps a young man named Edward, a Red who likes to ask questions. Sent to an outskirt town, he meets a violent, yet pretty Grey named Jane, stumbles into multiple conspiracies to beat the system and just tries to understand why no one is allowed to make more spoons.

As one would expect from Fforde, the books is extremely humorous and off-the-wall. Some examples: one of the greatest fears of the people in the world is being attacked by swans, spoons serve as valuable underground currency, and sex is referred to as youknow. Language itself is generally quite comical in the book, another example being that the apocalypse is simply referred to as "Something that Happened" (what actually happened, no one knows). Although funny, the humor doesn't all completely work. There were times where I mentally recognized a scene as funny but didn't find myself emotionally laughing about it. On the other hand, one paragraph had me in such stitches my wife had to come in from another room to find out what was going on. As with many works of humor, it can be a bit hit or miss.

The story, plot, and background seem better developed that what is found in the Thursday Next series, which has a much stronger "making up as he goes along" feel to it. Shades of Grey is the first book in what is planned to be at least a trilogy, so hopefully many of the unexplained aspects of the world will eventually be made clear by the end.(less)

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Mar 13, 2010

JG (The Introverted Reader) rated it

Shelves: 3_stars, author_british, fiction, read_in_2010, reviewed, setting_uk

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 questioning w...more 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 questioning what he sees going on around him.

I see potential here, but this first book in the series mostly felt like world-building to me. There's plenty of stuff going on, but I really did feel like it was mostly just to show me how very screwed up this society is. That said, let me tell you a couple of things about me that you should probably know.

I'm not crazy about dystopian literature as a whole. If an author writes an exciting story with characters that I like, (think
The Hunger Games
), I'm fine with dystopias. But I don't love them just because they're set in a world where things have gone wrong.

Also, I don't know anything about color theory. I love Jasper Fforde's sense of humor in the Thursday Next series and the Nursery Crimes series, but that's probably because I'm on solid footing with books and nursery rhymes. People who know more about color than me might get more out of this book, just like I'm going to understand more of the humor in
The Eyre Affair
than a non-reader.

I do see potential for me to ultimately like the series. Eddie is a likable chump who is on his way to becoming much more, but Jane is a character that I think I'll really, really like. We just aren't told a whole lot about her in this book. It's really just enough to want to know more.

I'll continue on, and I still love Jasper Fforde, but if you're picking up his work for the first time, I don't think I would recommend this one. So far I prefer his other two series much more.(less)

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Sep 15, 2010

Aphie rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: crime, fantasy, humorous-fantasy, science-fiction, social-theory

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, especially at fi...more

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Apr 10, 2011

Yvonne rated it

Shelves: fantasy

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...more

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Mar 05, 2010

Anna rated it

· review of another edition

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 Carmine, much...more

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Jul 24, 2011

prettybooks rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: read-after-university, dystopian-or-post-apocalyptic

“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 see any other natural colour unless it is created artificially. His aim is to marry into the Oxblood family and increase his position in society but he becomes infatuated with Jane, a lowly Grey, and a trip to the Outer Fringes throws everything he’s aimed for, and believed in, in disarray. Eddie is about to discover what his world is really like.

There are so many details (and all of them extremely well thought-out) that I cannot even begin to explain what I liked about this novel. The description summarises the society much better than I can: “There's evidence of a never-discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion.”

The novel is very slow paced but that’s because the thrill is in discovering this world for yourself: learning its social and legal rules, meeting many unique and hilarious characters, and discovering why this world most definitely not the utopia it appears to be.

I’m not giving the novel the full five star rating because I did get quite confused during the dénouement, but I imagine everything will make more sense when I reread it in the future. I cannot speak more highly of this novel… it’s fantastic. I’d recommend it to those looking for intelligent dystopian novels to read or just looking for something a little bit different. I’m very much looking forward to the sequel, Painting by Numbers, even though it isn’t due to be released until 2013.

(less)

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Jan 17, 2010

Joseph rated it

Shelves: dystopias, read-in-2010-01-january, best-of-2010, best-nonseries-fiction

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 the...more

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Aug 06, 2011

Graham Tapper added it · review of another edition

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 the rul...more

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Aug 02, 2011

Candace Burton added it

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...more

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Aug 03, 2010

Rowland Bismark added it · review of another edition

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 on the evils of societies that perpetuate themselves by infant...more

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May 04, 2012

Fantasynibbles rated it

· review of another edition

This was a second attempt for me, I read it when it first came out and was distraught to find I hated it :(

I LOVE Jasper Fforde, the man is akin to a God for me, so not liking this one was really not on my agenda. I had another, more determined crack at it on holiday last week, but sadly I crashed and burned once more.

The first paragraph of this one reminds me of Jabberwocky, it's completely incomprehensible. And for me much of the rest of the novel is the same way. I think Fforde's genius in hi...more

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Apr 29, 2012

Margaret rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books

Understatement of the Year: Jasper Fforde has a rather interesting mind. The result of his having such an interesting (and creative) mind is that his books must drive librarians and book store managers crazy, as in "Where to file this?" The choices include Fiction, Sci-Fi, and Mystery, and maybe even Social Commentary, if that's a separate category.

The world in this book is ruled by color and what people can see (or not) - this is the Colortocracy. One knows one's place in society based on color...more

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Mar 22, 2012

Frances rated it

This was a very Ffordian novel-completely original, often hard to follow, often very funny. Set in a dystopian future in which remnants of our world remain but much of current technology has been lost (in the successive "Great Leap Backwards"), society is dominated and directed by colour and your ability to perceive various shades on the spectrum. Eddie Russett, the protagonist, is of the Red caste and because of a misdemeanour (suggesting a way to improve queueing) he is sent to a remote villag...more

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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 Something That Ha...more

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Jan 28, 2012

Becky rated it

Shelves: 2012, adult, coming-of-age, crossover-appeal, dystopia, teen-mature, audiobook, sciencefiction

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 perceive a prima...more

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Jan 02, 2012

Michele Wilbert rated it

Shelves: kindle

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 explanations...more

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Nov 01, 2011

Mike Moore 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 important st...more 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 important statement on war and its effects that uses humor to stave off despair while Shades of Grey is an amusing novel which has as its central message something like "societal norms can be pretty silly". That said, I think the comparison is more apt in some ways than those to Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett that grace the cover of my copy.

This book is about a society of beings that seem to be fundamentally human (in terms of passions) but are different from us in several ways, most notably in their inability to perceive color as we do and the strong effect that certain colors can have on them (for example, various shades of green act as narcotics). This is a pretty hard concept to maintain throughout a narrative, and Fforde holds to it very well. There are several apparent inconsistencies, color-related and otherwise, but this may be a side-effect of the way the book is written. A big part of the appeal of the book is the gradual revealing of this strange world and its implications, and by the end of this first volume of a trilogy there are still many aspects of the world that have not been clearly described (for example, ambiguities around the race that makes up the main characters in terms of their relationship to humans and their physiology). However, while the picture of beings themselves is fairly hazy, their society is in sharp focus.

That society is strict, dogmatic, and subject to periodic sweeping changes. This last may seem incongruous, but the changes in question are "leap-back" regressions which inflict massive simplifications of the available technology and information. The rules of the social system are arbitrary and awkward, causing constant difficulty for all involved to the benefit of no one. In short, the social forms seem intentionally cumbersome with measures to make it progressively worse. The unlikeliness of such forms being adopted naturally is somewhat recognized and there are many implications that the society has been artificially created and maintained. At the same time, the society and its failures seem familiar, even encompassing the aforementioned artificiality in the role of conspiracy theory.

It's this focus on the society of the characters, as well as the occasional resonance with our own, that makes me feel that this is in a somewhat different league from novels that are superficially quite similar. There are a couple of things that keep this from being a five star book for me. First, the hints of familiarity remain just that. If there is a relevance of the society in this book to our own, beyond the trite and hopefully spurious analogy to theocratic and/or totalitarian regimes, that relevance will need to be revealed in later books. Second, I don't actually _like_ Kafka comedy. I generally find it tedious and irritating, and it's one of my least favorite features of writers like Connie Willis, as well as Pratchett and Adams. I have to admit that in the right hands it can be enjoyable, and Fforde proves the point admirably, but such a book is probably never going to be a personal favorite.(less)

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Oct 20, 2011

Lavonne rated it

Shelves: audio-books, sci-fi-horror, dystopian-lit

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...more

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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 challenged to follow s...more

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Oct 02, 2011

Annyaraz rated it

· review of another edition

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...more 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 noch wie ein Außenstehender, dem die ganzen Hinweise (und auch die absurden Regeln, die am Anfang jedes Kapitels stehen) nicht so richtig weiter geholfen haben. Vielmehr hatte ich das Gefühl, der Erzähler würde einer anderen anwesenden und im Gegensatz zu mir eingeweihten Person die Geschichte erzählen. Es dauerte also einige Zeit, bis ich richtig reingekommen bin. In diesem Stadium offenbart sich dann auch erst die ganze Genialität, die der Autor mit diesem Werk an den Tag legt (Zitat: "Gurken und Tomaten sind Obst, die Avocado ist eine Nuss. Zur Befriedigung der Nährstoffbedürfnisse von Vegetariern gilt jeden ersten Dienstag im Monat ein Hühnchen offiziell als Gemüse")

Eddie Russett hat mir als Protagonist gut gefallen. Einige Nebenfiguren waren z.T. für meinen Geschmack ein bisschen überspitzt dargestellt, aber nicht so, dass es nervig gewesen wäre. Da es allerdings ziemlich viele Charaktere sind, muss man sich sehr konzentrieren, um sie alle auseinanderhalten zu können (was aber eher ein generelles Problem ist und nicht speziell auf dieses Buch zurückzuführen ist)

Am Anfang war nicht so ganz klar, was die einzelnen Figuren eigentlich für ein Ziel verfolgen. Es ging viel um Heiratspläne und Wer-mit-wem-Fragen, was sich durch das gesamte Buch zieht. Auch das wird auf eine eher ungewöhnliche Art und Weise dargestellt, die sich aber gut in das große Ganze einfügt. Da alles eher sprunghaft als linear verläuft, fällt es schwer, die Beweggründe der Personen, von denen man auf Grund der Erzählperspektive weniger weiß, zu durchschauen, was aber auch zur Spannung beiträgt.

Die erste Hälfte braucht man erst mal, um sich einigermaßen zurechtzufinden. Erst danach werden langsam gewisse Pläne und Verschwörungen deutlich und die Handlung gewinnt an Tempo. Irgendwann laufen alle Stänge zusammen und es ergibt sich langsam ein großes Gesamtbild.

Es liest sich durchweg flüssig. Man gerät manchmal ins Stocken (gerade am Anfang) wenn irgendwelche Begriffe das erste Mal auftauchen, aber das gibt sich nach ein paar Kapiteln. Seine Sprache enthält teils einen leicht ironischen Unterton, was an der Art der Geschichte liegt, gerade in den oben erwähnten Regeln am Anfang jedes Kapitels, die z.T. echt lustig sind.

Da es der erste Teil einer Serie ist (wie ich auch erst im Nachhinein rausgefunden habe) ist das Ende relativ offen. Jetzt muss ich also gespannt auf den nächsten Band warten *hibbel*

Fazit: Ein wahnsinnig tolles Buch, das auf metaphorischer Ebene durchaus als Gesellschaftskritik durchgehen kann. Selten hab ich eine so originell ausgedachte Welt betreten.(less)

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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...more

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Sep 17, 2011

Mei-Lu McGonigle 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 accents...more 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 accents and culture), Something Has Happened. No one knows exactly what but humans are distinctly different now than they were Before. For one thing, their pupils do not adjust to light conditions so they can't see in the dark. (They comment on how creepy people look with their huge pupils in images before the Something That Happened.) More importantly, everyone is selectively color-blind. They can only see one color on the spectrum. How much of a color they can see determines their status. The main character, Eddie Russett, is a promising young man. Although he hasn't yet been tested for his color perception, he knows he can see red very very well indeed. He's hoping to marry up, into the Oxblood family. But all his hopes and dreams are screwed up when he and his father get sent to the Outer Fringes of civilized lands. There he discovers that the society in which he lives is not actually perfect. Structurally, the story of Shades of Grey is quite similar to the Matrix and I anticipate the second and third books in the planned trilogy will see Eddie bringing down the evil totalitarian regime that is currently in power. What I loved about this book was its slyly subversive sense of humor. Generally speaking, I'm not a huge fan of futuristic dystopian novels because they tend to be quite humorless. But when your main character falls in love with a girl because of the attractiveness of her nose and is afraid of giant swans, you know that humorlessness will NOT be a problem on this ride.(less)

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Sep 07, 2011

Steve Fox 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 the camel. And Fforde must...more

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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...more

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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...more

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Aug 23, 2011

Thea Guanzon rated it

· review of another edition

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...more

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Aug 13, 2011

Michele Weiner 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 more sensitive...more

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About Jasper Fforde

Jasper Fforde is a novelist living in Wales. He is the son of John Standish Fforde, the 24th Chief Cashier for the Bank of England, whose signature used to appear on sterling banknotes, and is cousin of the author, Katie Fforde. His early career was spent as a focus puller in the film industry, where he worked on a number of films including Quills, GoldenEye, and Entrapment.

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Quotes from Shades of Grey

“Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissanse is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.” — 77 people liked 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.” — 55 people liked it

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