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Title details for Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde - Available

Shades of Grey

A Novel

#1 in series

by Jasper Fforde
John Lee
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
IT’S SUMMER, IT’S HOT, IT’S OUR WORLD, but not as we know it. Entire cities lie buried beneath overgrown fields and forests. Technology from another time litters the landscape, and there is evidence of great upheaval. Welcome to Chromatacia, where for as long as anyone can remember society has been ruled by a Colortocracy. In this world, you are what you can see.
Eddie Russett wants to move up. He has better-than-average red perception, and he is on a half promise to Constance Oxblood, whose powerful family want the reddest possible son-in-law to strengthen their hue. But once Eddie and his father relocate to the backwater village of East Carmine, these carefully cultivated plans and expectations are quickly upended. In this new town, Eddie must contend with lethal swans, sneaky Yellows, inviolable rules and an enforced marriage to the hideous Violet deMauve. But then he encounters the intriguing Grey named Jane, whose bold defiance of the Rules makes him realize that the apparent peace of his world is as much an illusion as color itself.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Shades of Grey

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    December 29, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415955291
      • File size: 390996 KB
      • Duration: 13:34:34

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      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.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      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

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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