Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Shades of Grey is set in a future world where the colour that you can see, and how well you can see it, determines your standing in society. Eddie Russett is moving out of the city with his dad, who has been relocated to the Outer Fringes. Life there is much different from what he is used to and it takes him a while to get used to it. Eddie meets a Grey named Jane and finds himself falling in love with her. The problem is that he is a Red and so above her in the social order so a union between the two of them would be frowned on. As if that wasn’t enough to deal with, the Prefects of the town have taken a dislike to him so he must be always on the lookout. As Eddie settles into town life he notices strange things happening. Can he work out what’s going on before he gets killed?

I thought that the world Jasper Fforde has created is pretty cool. At first it was very confusing as there doesn’t seem to be any particular order for the social hierarchy other than Greys are the lowest and Purples are the highest. It’s set hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened but there are still traces from out world. A few names have trickled through and stories have been passed down and distorted. In the eye department humans have devolved as they can no longer see in the dark or see colour properly. There is a lot of lightning and massive swans to attack them so they don’t travel much. At its core it’s your average dystopian world but the extras that have been added make it different enough that it keeps it fresh.

Eddie was also a fairly standard character who finds himself in a place where he doesn’t know all the rules. He is naive and easily manipulated into doing what his new friend Tommo wants him to do. I liked Eddie but he wasn’t original enough for me, although he did get more intelligent as the book went on. I did like the characters of Tommo and Courtland who are the baddies of the piece. They are both self-centred and get Eddie into trouble often. They’re not nice people but they live in a tough world and this is how they cope. My favourite character was definitely Jane as she is badass. She questions everything and doesn’t let people treat her differently just because she is a Grey.

There is humour in the book too, this is a Jasper Fforde book after all. It’s not laugh out loud funny but it is feel good, puts a smile on your face humour. The book is full of references to our world, some I got and many others probably went over my head. It did make me smile every time I spotted a reference to something like Star Wars and Sherlock Holmes. The writing kept me engaged and, once I’d got over my confusion at the start, really enjoyed how it was written.

This book is brilliant and I would absolutely recommend it. I didn’t really have any expectations going in to the book and I was pleasantly surprised. For me, the world and its structure could have done with more explanation but he may be writing a prequel which will hopefully answer some questions. I think dystopia is a difficult genre to write as they don’t differ much but this stood out for me. It probably helped that I haven’t read any dystopia for a while so I wasn’t bored of it. This is my first book by Jasper Fforde and won’t be my last. It’s a fun read and I will certainly be checking out more of his books.

Overall rating 4 out of 5.