2015-Dec-Jan16 Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Only three people going to be available for our meeting, so it was cancelled and perhaps we'll have a discussion about this book next month. 
 
My Comments:
Difficult to get into as I don't read fantasy/Scifi any more. Post apocalyptic story. the world has been completely reformed and people are classified by the colours that they can see into a hierarchy with purple at the top and grey at the bottom. Stupid thing like colour is fed to the gardens in CYM just like a printer, yet the medical profession works by colour patches for every ill, The numbers of the patches are in threes, but go up to 300+ and not like the HTML colour codes which are 0-FF for Red-Green-Blue.[html-colour-codes.info] 

Spoiled a bit by two homonymal spelling mistakes (p379 l8 Towed for toed). Our hero is the 12 year old son of a colour-swatcher (medico) that is sent to a remote village to replace their man who has died. There are elements in the village that are subversive, including Jane who Eddie falls for. People undergo an Ishihara test to determine what colour they are, and try to marry up. That's a sub-theme of the book. There are people trying to get out, and a colour master trying to find out what has been happening. I got drawn into it by the half-way mark. Tommo is the ultimate fixer, for a commission. The final impression is that Eddie is going to do whatever he can to undermine the world management committee that sets the rules and see that they are enforced.

Things like the periodic upsets when things from the past are banned and the populace gets ever backward, yet has developed carnivorous, self maintaining roads and has replaced railways with monorail travel are hard to live with, and trees that eat people.

Despite that, would I read the next book in the series? I have got to know the people so maybe. The author has some weird ideas and I wonder if he is writing to warn us of the state of our nation. 

Mark [6]

Ros's Comments

I thoroughly enjoyed Shades of Grey. Had some moments in the first chapter when I thought it so bizarre that I wondered whether to continue. The control by colour vision is a  totally novel concept - only possible in science fiction- and it seemed to work. It took me a  while to start to suspect that there might be a dark controlling aspect. Made me think of Wool by Hugh Howey. 

 

I liked the characters, enjoyed the humour and the overall idea is very clever. Loved the names both of people and places and the spoons and particularly the Apocryphal Man - when he realised that he could be seen……

 

It is quirky and witty and I would give it 8/10 and hope that there might be time in a future meeting when we might discuss it again, because I would love to…… Thank you Lis for introducing me to Jasper Fforde!

 

Note to Ros: Many years ago, perhaps before your time, we had read 'The Eyre Affair'.