MAVENity

Shades of Grey is Jasper Fforde's 8th novel, and the first set outside the Thursday Next universe

Shades of Grey is a complex, fascinating novel set in a future, dystopian society where society is segregated by the dominant color one can see (and everything else is grey). It’s 1984 and Brave New World set in a futuristic Wales/England, when society as we know it no longer exists (our kind referred to simply as The Previous and our time the Pre-Epiphanic age), and everything is sorted according to the Colortocracy. The Purples are on top, with Yellows, Greens, Blues, Oranges and Reds below them, plus the colorless Greys on the bottom, performing society’s most menial tasks. There are many Rules set forth in the Word of Munsell, written after The Something That Happened (which no one seems to know the story behind), and one’s standing in society, after color of course, is based on a system of merits – book merits that determine your ability to marry, hold a job and whether or not you should go to Reboot (where one is reprogrammed to be more civil and obedient) and cash merits, which one uses to barter for goods, favors, and dowrys.

Sound confusing? It is, but in the most delightful way. For those who are unfamiliar with Fforde’s work, such Random Capitalizations and bizarre social strata are his trademark in such series as Thursday Next (set in an alternate reality where fiction is real, and Thursday can jump into the book world) and Nursery Crime (where the characters of nursery rhymes are very real, and live in Reading). Shades of Grey is his first world that is completely separated from Thursday Next (Nursery Crime is a spin-off of that universe), and his decidedly most “adult” novel, in that it will appeal outside of the fantasy literature world to which Thursday markets. That said, those who aren’t already initiated in the Ffordian way may not take to the novel as readily as the author’s devoted readers (a group to which I myself belong).

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron is the first in a planned trilogy, and while replete with rich detail and tantalizing plot elements, scarcely scratches the surface of Fforde’s complex universe. The novel follows 20-year-old Eddie Russet, a Red, who is sent to East Carmine on the Outer Fringes of the Collective to do a chair census and learn some humility. He’s been shipped out alongside his father, a Chromaticologist (a healer who uses color swatches to cure people of their ills) who has been called in to temporarily replace the town’s recently deceased doctor.

Two Greys show off their spoons -- a limited comodity in the Collective. Photo courtesy of jasperfforde.com

Eddie is on a half promise to Constance Oxblood in his home town of Jade-under-Lime, but has competition in Roger Maroon — his Ishihara, the test that determines how much color one sees and what spectrum, will decide his future – the boy with the most Red will win Constance’s hand.  He has ambitions to take over the Oxblood’s string empire, revolutionize the queuing system (whilst not violating any of the Rules, which denounce such challenging) and join National Color, if he can test high enough to sit the entrance exam. This is all before he meets the plucky Jane Grey on his way to East Carmine, and becomes embroiled in a bizarre mystery involving a dead Grey, missing color swatches, underhanded Yellows, enforced marriage to a stroppy Purple, a certain disregard for The Rules and the mysterious town of High Saffron, from which no one has ever returned.

Fforde has done it again, creating an engrossing, bizarre, thought-provoking universe that leaves you wanting more. Told exclusively from the perspective of the naive and unquestioning Eddie, details of the world that was and the world that is sneak through, teasing in the best sort of way. As Eddie gets answers, so do we, but there is much left undiscovered at the close of The Road to High Saffron. There is a lot of potential in the Shades of Grey universe, though it is decidedly less fantastical, and less plot-driven, than the Thursday series.

As always, Fforde creates a cast of quirky characters who entertain, provoke questions and make the reader care. Eddie is hopelessly eager and at times frustrating in his cluelessness, but his evolution over the course of the novel is compelling nonetheless. Female lead-of-sorts Jane at first comes off abrupt (threatening to break Eddie’s jaw, pushing him into a carnivorous plant to be eaten), however, Fforde endears her to readers gradually as she falls for Eddie and we learn more about her. By the novel’s close Jane has the reader wanting more of her perspective – what is it like to be a Grey? How did she begin to discover the Collective’s secrets?

Other strong if eccentric characters are the Apocryphal man, a naturist/historian who lives in Eddie’s attic and is so unacceptable and unexplainable by the Collective’s standards that he is considered invisible, and Violet DeMauve, the shrill tour-de-force of East Carmine who is determined to have Eddie and his Redness to strengthen her Purple line, come hell or high water. She is sure to develop mightily in the following two books, and perhaps even redeem her incredibly annoying qualities. And the Apocryphal man knows a lot about the last 400+ years of Collective history but will only answer questions in exchange for jars of ligonberry jam. If only Ikea were still around…

That said, some of the characters are a bit thin, which may be a consequence of the world’s restrictive tendencies, or the fact that this is the first in the trilogy. The pain-staking world building Fforde does is at the expense of plot and character development for the first half of the book. If you’re in it for the world-building, it’s perfect, but those who prefer plot and character driven work maybe frustrated to the point of giving up.  Those who stick it out, however, will be rewarded with the book’s exciting conclusion, and the tease of things to come in the subsequent novels.

Given his next release will be the sixth book in the Thursday Next series, we’ll have to wait at least a year to two years for the next in the Shades of Grey series, a killer given how many questions The Road to High Saffron leaves you with. What was The Something that Happened? How did the Collective’s post-code allocation system come into being? (each citizen has a postal-code scarred into their skin, and there are a finite number of codes available, by which the Collective controls the population size) And, of course, how did the chromatic society come to be? Was it genetic manipulation gone wrong? Is there another world out there, beyond the outer boundaries (and England)? It’s a book that makes you think, wrapped around characters who make you care.

Shades of Grey is a must-read for Fforde fans, though the initiated may be put off by Fforde’s plucky, bizarre writing style. But once you’re used to it, his literary world holds untold narrative riches that beg a lot of questions about ethics, genetics, the modern world, authority and free will. And spoons. Lots of questions about spoons.