Shades of Grey

Synopsis: Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane -- a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed. For Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey ...If George Orwell had tripped over a paint pot or Douglas Adams favoured colour swatches instead of towels ...neither of them would have come up with anything as eccentrically brilliant as Shades of Grey.

Review: Here's something completely different from Jasper. Eddie Russett lives in Chromatacia (a post apocalyptic version of our world several hundred years hence.) A world where your standing and social status depends on how much colour you can see. Most people in Chromatacia have limited vision and no night vision at all, so seeing natural colour is highly prized. It's a sort of dystopian 'Pride & Prejudice' with colour being everybody's motivating factor instead of money. Those that can see purple are the highest ranked in society and those that have no colour perception at all are called 'greys' and are basically the lowest and the last.

Eddie, a fairly strong red, is hoping to elevate himself in society by marrying into the Oxblood family and becoming heir to their string empire, but unfortunately, although he's on a half promise, he is not the only suitor for Constance Oxblood .. Roger Maroon is also in the running. Eddie has been sent to East Carmine to conduct a chair census as part of his 'humility training' (following a prank and an unwelcome proposal for a number queuing system to be introduced in his hometown.) He's accompanied there by his father who is a chromaticologist .. a sort of doctor who uses colour as cures (unless the patient has the dreaded mildew which is, alas, incurable.)

Along the way Eddie comes across Jane, an extremely disrespectful not to say rebellious grey (who is on her way to re-boot along with all perceived troublemakers.) Their first encounter is fairly explosive and pretty disastrous. Jane is so opposite to any greys, not to say women, that Eddie has come across before, that he is at first completely non-plussed by her. It's not long though before his initial wariness turns to admiration (for one thing Jane has a really cute retroussé nose, which Eddie can't help but admire, even though mentioning it is likely to get his eyebrows ripped off.) Eventually, as he gets to know Jane, Eddie begins to question the morals and values of the society in which he lives. It seems that there are some pretty underhand and sinister goings on in Chromatacia. Things are not exactly black and white so to speak. His relationship with Jane doesn't go smoothly though, for one thing she has a tendency towards violence not to say a willingness to feed him to a man eating Yateveo plant.

Really inventive as you would expect from Jasper with great characters and lots of colour-related puns. I loved Eddie, he has the sort of wide eyed innocence of Bertie Wooster, although he's nowhere near as dim. I loved the Apocryphal man too, a discredited historian whose depth of knowledge of the past 400 years has made him unacceptable and therefore invisible to the collective ... as Eddie's father says .. 'I pity the poor people he's not lodging with'. Shades of Grey is the first book in the series .. I think as the books progress I'll become even more familiar with Chromatacia and it's ways and begin to enjoy it even more because although I enjoyed it a lot I had the same feeling as I did when I read 'The Eyre Affair' of being not always quite in the loop. It helped tremendously that it was read to me and the narration was excellent. I didn't think it was as funny as the Thursday Next series, being gentler in style but it's still very amusing, thought provoking and quirky.