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A review by srs_moonlight
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
adventurous
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
With a publication date of 2009 and a generic title, a reader here in the year of our Lord 2024 might be prone to write off Shades of Grey as another Hunger Games pretender, just one more in the spate of mid-quality YA Dystopia from that era. But you’d be missing out - Shades of Grey holds up. Fforde’s world feels fully realized and unique, and his writing is funny and clever without cloying levels of quirkiness. The premise of a hierarchy based on the level of an individual’s color perception is _very_ whimsical, but the writing and the supporting characters are strong enough for the most part to make it work.
It’s not a total bullseye. Our hero, Eddie Russet, is utterly pathetic, though his hero’s journey sees him become…uh, mildly less so. The main romantic tension in the story fell flat for me, as I can’t really understand what either character sees in the other. Nonetheless, the relation of each to the society they are forced to inhabit makes them interesting enough individually, even if their pairing doesn’t quite land. The supporting cast helps too - the world of Chromatacia is home to a vibrant collection of characters, whose cute punny names and motley personalities bring the right amount of color to Fforde’s world without wearing out their welcome.
It’s obvious from early on that this book is the start to a series, and that Fforde has a lot of world-building yet to do. At time of writing, he has managed to finally publish a sequel after more than a decade. Whether there’s enough here to sustain an entire trilogy will depend on not just good world-building, which Shades of Grey has in abundance; it will also need main characters who are vibrant enough to be the thread that connects them, which is in shorter supply here.
It’s not a total bullseye. Our hero, Eddie Russet, is utterly pathetic, though his hero’s journey sees him become…uh, mildly less so. The main romantic tension in the story fell flat for me, as I can’t really understand what either character sees in the other. Nonetheless, the relation of each to the society they are forced to inhabit makes them interesting enough individually, even if their pairing doesn’t quite land. The supporting cast helps too - the world of Chromatacia is home to a vibrant collection of characters, whose cute punny names and motley personalities bring the right amount of color to Fforde’s world without wearing out their welcome.
It’s obvious from early on that this book is the start to a series, and that Fforde has a lot of world-building yet to do. At time of writing, he has managed to finally publish a sequel after more than a decade. Whether there’s enough here to sustain an entire trilogy will depend on not just good world-building, which Shades of Grey has in abundance; it will also need main characters who are vibrant enough to be the thread that connects them, which is in shorter supply here.