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Describe your new book: This book is the story of my life — the ups, the downs, and the music. If someone were to write your biography, what... Continue »
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2 Burnside Science Fiction and Fantasy- A to Z

eBook editions

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron

by Jasper Fforde

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron Cover

ISBN13: 9780670019632
ISBN10: 0670019631
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
All Product Details

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

An astonishing, hotly anticipated new novel from the great literary fantasist and creator of Thursday Next, Jasper Fforde.

As long as anyone can remember, society has been ruled by a Colortocracy. From the underground feedpipes that keep the municipal park green to the healing hues viewed to cure illness to a social hierarchy based upon one's limited color perception, society is dominated by color. In this world, you are what you can see.

Young Eddie Russett has no ambition to be anything other than a loyal drone of the Collective. With his better-than-average red perception, he could well marry Constance Oxblood and inherit the string works; he may even have enough red perception to make prefect.

For Eddie, life looks colorful. Life looks good.

But everything changes when he moves with his father, a respected swatchman, to East Carmine. There, he falls in love with a Grey named Jane who opens his eyes to the painful truth behind his seemingly perfect, rigidly controlled society.

Curiosity — a dangerous trait to display in a society that demands total conformity — gets the better of Eddie, who beings to wonder:

  • Why are there not enough spoons to go around?
  • Why is everything — and everyone — barcoded?
  • What happened to all the people who never returned from High Saffron?
  • And why, when you begin to question the world around you, do black-and-white certainties reduce themselves to shades of grey?

Part satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, this is the new world from the creative and comic genius of Jasper Fforde.

Review:

"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. (Jan.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"This series starter combines the dire warnings of Brave New World and 1984 with the deevolutionary visions of A Canticle for Leibowitz and Riddley Walker, but, Fforde being Fforde, his dystopia includes an abundance of tea shops and a severe shortage of jam varieties. It's all brilliantly original. If his complex worldbuilding sometimes slows the plot and the balance of silly and serious is uneasy, we're still completely won over. In our own willful myopia, we sorely need the laughs." Booklist (starred review)

Review:

"Already cult-worshipped for his popular Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes novels, Fforde is something like a contemporary Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear....to dispel a black mood and chase away the blues, this witty novel offers an eye-popping spectrum of remedies. A grateful hue and cry (as well as sequels) may be anticipated." Kirkus
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About the Author

Jasper Fforde is the bestselling author of the Thursday Next series and the Nursery Crimes series.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 10 comments:
Eric Taxer, January 1, 2012 (view all comments by Eric Taxer)
Great comment on society, and a fun read!
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Cynthia Spiller, January 3, 2011 (view all comments by Cynthia Spiller)
Shades of Grey does for spoons what Hitchiker's Guide did for towels. Strange and inventive, Jasper Fforde explores the very nature of sight and truth, in a world where the color a person sees dictates all facets of their life. Original and absorbing t... OK, let's be honest, Jasper Fforde's novels couldn't be more original if they were written by aliens, which would explain the giant swans if nothing else. Just buy the book and enjoy it(as if you needed a reason to follow a yellow's orders).
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Porsche, January 2, 2011 (view all comments by Porsche)
Entertaining and intriguing. Strange, but delightful.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780670019632
Subtitle:
A Novel
Author:
Fforde, Jasper
Publisher:
Viking Adult
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Love stories
Subject:
Dystopias
Subject:
Fantasy fiction
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Copyright:
2009
Edition Description:
B-Hardcover
Publication Date:
20091229
Binding:
Hardback
Grade Level:
from 12
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
400
Dimensions:
9.26x6.62x1.31 in. 1.35 lbs.
Age Level:
from 18
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Related Subjects

Fiction and Poetry » Science Fiction and Fantasy » A to Z

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron Used Hardcover
0 stars - 0 reviews
$14.50 In Stock
Product details 400 pages Viking Books - English 9780670019632 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "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. (Jan.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review" by , "This series starter combines the dire warnings of Brave New World and 1984 with the deevolutionary visions of A Canticle for Leibowitz and Riddley Walker, but, Fforde being Fforde, his dystopia includes an abundance of tea shops and a severe shortage of jam varieties. It's all brilliantly original. If his complex worldbuilding sometimes slows the plot and the balance of silly and serious is uneasy, we're still completely won over. In our own willful myopia, we sorely need the laughs." (starred review)
"Review" by , "Already cult-worshipped for his popular Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes novels, Fforde is something like a contemporary Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear....to dispel a black mood and chase away the blues, this witty novel offers an eye-popping spectrum of remedies. A grateful hue and cry (as well as sequels) may be anticipated."
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