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.

Never Let Me Go

Synopsis: In one of the most acclaimed and strange novels of recent years, Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewered version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now 31, "Never Let Me Go" hauntingly dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, "Never Let Me Go" is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

'My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think I'm fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who've been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I'm not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact they've been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as 'agitated', even before fourth donation. Okay, maybe I am boasting now. But it means a lot to me, being able to do my work well.

Review: I loved every page. You begin this book by thinking you are reading about a fairly normal girl at a fairly normal boarding school. Kathy's schooldays at Hailsham sound pretty idyllic and from the way she eulogises about it you think that Hailsham must be pretty special and it is, just not in the way you were thinking. Bit by bit she drops snippets into her recollections that make you think that all is not as it seems and fairly soon you know that something fairly disturbing is occurring. This is not Malory Towers!

You get to know the characters very well, Kathy and Tommy in particular, but there is always a slight detachment. Kathy is not emotional in the way that we perhaps expect her to be, and she accepts her situation with a kind of docile resignation. All the same her narration draws you in. In some respects Kathy and her schoolfriends are not entirely clued up about their situation, they know about it, they've always known about it, but somehow it hasn't entirely registered. You hope at some point the penny will drop and she'll rebel because you don't want her to suffer the same fate as the others, you feel it would be easy for her just to run for the hills but these children/young adults have been conditioned to accept their destiny.

Haunting and beautifully written, it keeps you turning pages even though it is extremely slow paced. Some people feel that the science doesn't add up, it probably doesn't but I don't think it matters. It's thought provoking, you hope such horrors could never occur, but the unacceptable often becomes acceptable without you quite knowing how it happened.

The Road

Synopsis: A man and his young son traverse a blasted American landscape, covered with "the ashes of the late world." The man can still remember the time before. The boy knows only this time. There is nothing for them but survival — they are "each other's world entire" — and the precious last vestiges of their own humanity. At once brutal and tender, despairing and rashly hopeful, spare of language and profoundly moving, The Road is a fierce and haunting meditation on the tenuous divide between civilization and savagery, and the essential, sometimes terrifying power of filial love. It is a masterpiece.

Review: It doesn't get much bleaker than this, a truly tragic tale of a man and his son trying to find their way to the coast in post apocalyptic America (well, the country's not actually named but I took it to be America because of one or two slight references, though it could be anywhere). The writing has been pared to the bone, there is hardly any dialogue and in that respect it felt rather like reading Hemingway. There are no chapters, just fairly short paragraphs of either description or dialogue, every word is weighed and measured. The man and the boy exchange a few short sentences every now and then, the boy seeking understanding or comfort and the man trying to reassure and instill hope or else relaying simple instructions.

But for all that it's not overly descriptive or wordy, it's so beautifully written that you can clearly see that ash ridden, bleak and desolate landscape and feel the desperation of the man and boy. When you think about a landscape devoid of animals, devoid even of rats to feed on corpses, devoid of plant life and sunlight it's utterly unendurable, and the writer makes you feel the loss of these things yourself as you read.

We're not told why this catastrophe happened, which makes it all a bit more terrifying because when a reason is given you can usually find a way of persuading yourself that the chances of it really happening are so slim as to be negligible. We just know that everything, and practically everyone, is dead, and the world has been thrown into perpetual winter.

It felt right that there weren't any chapters, there was nothing to break the spell, no obvious resting places. I had to tear myself away from the book from time to time, in order to try and lighten my mood, but really, from the moment I read that their aim was to find their way to the coast, I was so anxious that they should get there that I just kept reading on and on.

Although it's not what you'd call an action-packed book, there are some pretty horrific scenes, and also some times when their relentless slow trudge across the scorched earth turns into a desperate flight for survival. There are only a few people left on earth, how many is not known, but among them are some pretty terrifying people, people who will do everything and anything to ensure their survival. People with nothing to lose.

All you are hoping for, is that the man and the boy reach the coast and some sort of safety, you celebrate every small piece of good fortune that comes their way and you feel fear whenever they see or meet anyone on the road.I can see that not everybody would like it, it's pretty harrowing stuff. There isn't any light relief or jokes (I imagine they're dead like everything else) but it's compelling and powerful.

I was truly terrified by it, an incredible piece of writing.

Fever Crumb

Synopsis: "Fever Crumb" is a stunning, stand-alone prequel to Philip Reeve's brilliant science fantasy quartet. It is set many generations before the events of Mortal Engines, in whose dazzling world huge, predatory cities chase and devour each other. Now, London is a riot-torn, ruinous town, clinging to a devastated landscape and hiding an explosive secret. Is Fever, adopted daughter of Dr Crumb, the strange key that will unlock its dangerous mysteries?

Review: I hadn't read any of the 'Mortal Engine' books so I had no idea what to expect from this prequel. It's a story set in futuristic London, a story about Fever, an orphan, abandoned at birth and brought up by scientist Dr Crumb. She is the youngest member and only female of the Order of Engineers.

Fever has had a practical, unemotional upbringing and is very realistic and serious. She has a shaven head, hair is .. 'just a vestige of our animal past and provides a home for lice and other parasites'. She drinks boiled water .. 'it is deeply irrational that dried leaves should be transported halfway around the world aboard ships and land barges simply to flavour water. Besides tea is a stimulant, which leads to nervousness and irrationality' and she cannot see the purpose of jokes.

London had once been ruled by The Scriven, who were brilliant, cruel and not entirely human .. they liked to call themselves 'Homo superior'. However, like most mutant strains, they hadn't thrived for long. Largely unsuccessful in breeding and held in contempt by native Londoners they were sought out and slaughtered in an event known as the 'Skinners Riots'.

One day Fever is sent on a placement to archaeologist Kit Solent's house, he has specifically requested that she help him study some artefacts. But her odd coloured eyes and shaven head evoke suspicion in some of the native Londoners, and it isn't long before the Skinners get wind of this odd looking traveller and set about trying to track her down.

She expects to be taken by Kit to some ancient site, but instead he takes her to a secret passage that runs underneath his house. The passage leads to a chamber in which there is a door, with no handles or hinges .. just a 'lectronic keypad'. It requires a code to break it and for some strange reason, Kit expects Fever to know that code and even stranger than that is that Fever thinks she does remember that code.

She starts to find her stay at Kit Solents house unsettling, she begins to have thoughts and feelings that she's never experienced before. She wonders about her past, who were her real parents?. She begins to remember things, memories of other yesterdays which could not possibly have been hers for she has always lived at Godshawk's Head with Dr Crumb.

And all the while a huge army makes it's way South, tribes of people from the North who have been set wandering by the plagues and firestorms. Travelling in gigantic wagons and traction castles, huge cities moving ever onwards towards the 'Moatway' gates and London.

I thought the writing was fantastic, if Dickens had ever written a futuristic novel for children then it would be very much like this one .. with the Skinners, the Scriven and the Patchskins .. The Mott and Hoople Pub, Pickled Eel Circus, Cripplegate, Stragglemarket and St Kylie. Clearly Philip Reeve is a David Bowie fan as there is graffiti saying 'This ain't genocide, this is rock'n'roll' and there is also a pub called 'Scary Monsters and Super Creeps' (also Fever has mismatched eyes as Bowie has). Central to it all is Fever, and though she is a weird little unemotional thing, you can't help but be interested in her and anxious about her welfare.

Apparently, though this is a prequel, it's best if you read it last. I haven't done that but I'm still interested to read the others because they sound even more fantastic.

Cloud Atlas

Synopsis: 'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies ...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagans California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanitys dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

Review: Disappointingly I didn't enjoy it. It felt like six short stories that were only wispily linked, some of the stories I liked and some I didn't which meant that I would have preferred more of one and much less of the other.

The first story we encounter is 'The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing'. Adam is a rather naive American notary writing his journal on board the Prophetess in 1850 as it makes it's way across the Pacific. It's enjoyable enough in it's way but not rivetting and the story stops abruptly .. literally in mid sentence.

The next story is 'Letters from Zedelghem' and this one I enjoyed. It's about an impoverished composer called Robert Frobisher who travels to Belgium, sometime between the two world wars, in order to throw himself at the mercy of a reclusive English composer in order to work as his amenuensis. Robert is a wastrel, immoral and self absorbed but his letters to his friend Sixsmith are at times hilarious.

'Dover an utter fright staffed by Bolsheviks, versified cliffs as Romantic as my ar*e and a similar hue'

We then come to ''Half Lives - The First Luisa Rey Mystery' which is a story set in California in the 1970's. Luisa is a journalist investigating corruption at a nuclear power plant. I wasn't that taken with this story, it was ok but it seemed more like a script for one of those made-for-TV movies destined to be shown on a Tuesday afternoon.

Next is 'The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish' about a 'vanity publisher' fleeing from the gangster brothers of his client. Timothy calls upon his brother for help, and heads for what he thinks is a kind of safe house/hotel hoping to lie low until the furore dies down. His ghastly ordeal continues when he finds he is confined in a nursing home from which there is no escape. This was another of the stories that I enjoyed, the tale is wittily told and Timothy is very funny.

'I was sent to my room without breakfast. I plotted vengeance, litigation and torture. I inspected my cell. Door, locked from outside, no keyhole. Window that only opened six inches. Heavy duty sheets made of egg carton fibres with plastic undersheet. Armchair, washable seat-cover. Moppable carpet. 'Easywipe' wallpaper.'En Suite' bathroom: soap, shampoo, flannel, ratty towel, no window. Picture of cottage captioned: A House is Made by hands, but a Home is Made by Hearts. prospects for break-out: p*ss poor'

Then we arrive at 'An Orison of Somni', a dystopian story set in Korea about a genetically engineered server at Papa Songs diner who is being interviewed, by the archivist, before her execution. This I found a mixture of both interesting and uninteresting but for this first part of her story anyway I was intrigued. A terrifying description of what life is like for a futuristic cloned server in a McDonalds/Burger King type outlet .. bred to work for 20 hours a day, incapable of independant thought, working tirelessly to earn their twelve stars which will enable them to retire to 'Xultation' in Hawaii (though this we find out later is far from the case).

'Hour four thirty is yellow-up. Stimulin enters the airflow to rouse us from our cots. We file into hygiener; then we steam-clean. Back in our dooroom we dress in fresh uniform; then gather round the Hub with our Seers and his Aides. Papa Song appears on His Plinth for Matins, and we recite the Six Catechisms together. Our logoman then delivers His Sermon. At a minute before hour five we go to our positions around the Hub'

The central story (and the longest as it was the only one not split into two) was 'Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After'. A tale set in post-apocalyptic Hawaii and told by tribesman Zachry in heavy dialect. This tale together with 'An Orison of Somni' reminded me a bit of reading Will Self's 'The Book of Dave', the reading of which I would never willingly want to be reminded of. I stopped and stuttered so much over the two .. especially 'Sloosha's Crossin' that it disrupted the flow of the book entirely.

'Mis'ry'n'barrassment are hungersome for blame, an' what I blamed for losin' Roses was the dammit Prescient. That mornin' on Moon's Nest I got up an' hollered my goats an' droved 'em to Thumb pasture without even sayin' goodbye to Meronym. She'd got 'nuff Smart to leave me be, mem'ry she'd got a son o'her own back on Prescience I'

We then go into rewind .. and continue with the first five tales in reverse. Finding out what happened to each of our narrators/protagonists after the point in which we left them until we finally read what was written in the rest of Adam Ewings journal. This only works if you enjoyed all of the stories, if you didn't you approach them again with a kind of dread or ennui .. thankfully the one I enjoyed least was the central one so it wasn't too bad.

I can see it's ambitious, clever and well written .. I can see that lots of people will love it ... but overall I didn't enjoy reading it as much as I was hoping. It gave me knots in my head .. and my reading mojo, which was healthy and eager for challenges, is going to have to be coaxed out of a darkened room .. from whence it retired with a 'Cloud Atlas' induced migraine.