Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde

In a world where life is lived by the rule book, and your social hierarchy is determined by you perception of colour.  Eddie Russett is an above average red who dreams of moving up the ladder.  Until he is sent to the outer fringes and falls in love with a lowly Grey who keeps trying to Kill him.


Why Read - Recommendation from a friend, as I have been reading a few different types of sci-fi/fantasy novels.

Fantastic.  It took me a few chapters to get into the flow of things, but then you have to get used to Ffordes world, and his way of thinking. But as soon as you get into this novel it really picks up and is a fantastic read.

In a world where everything is seen and ranked in colour, its a wonderful concept for a fantasy world.  Fforde also brings in elements from our world, and you cant put a time frame on this novel as he seems to use old technologies with really advanced stuff.  And some of the references to the classic have a very witty twist. This generally follows into his style of writing, very cleverly witty.

I think this is the kind of book though that you would need to read more than once. You can get the general gist of this story, and some of his brilliant play on words. But i think if you were to read it again you would get so much more out of it. Understand the more intricate weaves of this story and find new bits of this novel you didn't notice the first time round.

Fantastic read, even went out and purchased another Fforde book to see if its just as good. Also this one, and some of the other similar books has defiantly got me interested in this genre of writing.