Shades of Grey

November 23, 2009
This inventive fantasy from bestseller Fforde (The Eyre Affair
) imagines a screwball future in which social castes and protocols are rigidly defined by acuteness of personal color perception. Centuries after the cryptically cataclysmic “Something That Happened,” a “Colortocracy,” founded on the inflexible absolutes of the chromatic scale, rules the world. Amiable Eddie Russett, a young Red, is looking forward to marrying a notch up on the palette and settling down to a complacent bourgeois life. But after meeting Jane G-23, a rebellious working-class Grey, and a discredited, “invisible” historian known as the Apocryphal man, Eddie finds himself questioning the hitherto sacred foundations of the status quo. En route to finding out what turned things topsy-turvy, Eddie navigates a vividly imagined landscape whose every facet is steeped in the author's remarkably detailed color scheme. Sometimes, though, it's hard to see the story for the chromotechnics. 10-city author tour.

For the terminally wacky among us, punster extraordinaire Jasper Fforde (THE EYRE AFFAIR; The Nursery Crimes series) is at it again. This time he plunges listeners into a post-apocalyptic "Colortocracy," centuries after "Something That Happened." In a caste system based upon one's ability to perceive color, citizens must follow rigid rules--no questions tolerated. Eddie Russet, a Red, wants to earn enough merits for an advantageous union with Constance Oxblood. Instead, he falls for Jane, a revolutionary Grey, his eyes are opened, and he reconsiders the rules. John Lee does everything right. He doesn't simply change voices for new characters--he changes personalities. Lee makes the insanity seem curiously normal. Fans of Fforde's unabashedly groan-inducing puns will love Lee's performance of this wickedly colorful satire. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine