Audio book review: Shades of Grey

When you start listening to Jasper Fforde "Shades of Grey" you'll think it's the strangest and most confusing book you've ever heard of. The first two discs are a mess of references to colors in names, cities, medical treatments, and simply everything. It's difficult to figure out the nature of the world and the slow nature of the story makes one think very seriously about giving up and putting the book aside. But somewhere in disc three things start to make sense. The story starts to become coherent. Then the story starts to become interesting. It becomes more and more interesting until the middle of the last disc. Then he wraps things up and the story ends.

A long time ago there was a thing that happened. We never find out what that thing was. Only that it was about 500 years ago. A figure named Muncil wrote a book of rules to organize society. And ever since then they've been following his rules absolutely. Manufacturing spoons was forbidden for some reason and now they're extremely rare. Even suggesting how people might stand in line differently is frowned on. After school they used to give their kids a glass of milk and a smack until someone suggested that might be a typo.

Before the something that happened the world was very advanced. They managed to genetically engineer absolutely everything so that it would grow barcodes. Highways feed off debris and repair themselves. Motors would spin forever. These relics remain even 500 years later. But the most advanced car is a Model T and each town has only a few. That's because every so often there's a rollback. More tech is banned, books destroyed, and knowledge lost.

The strangest thing about the world is how it's all organized around color. People can only see in certain shades, and not everyone sees in the same shades or to the same degree. Our main character has the ability to see some red. Others see blue or yellow to varying degrees. Their last names are based on the colors a family sees. Many people see only shades of grey. The colors you see help determine your position in the caste system. And being shown certain colors makes your body respond in different ways. Most people get high from certain shades of green. Other colors may make you heal faster or ovulate sooner.

The story starts with a boy and his father seeing the town before being sent off to an outer community. Dad's a swatchman (doctor) being sent to replace the old doctor. The son is being sent off for humility training after daring to suggest better ways to line up. Before they go, someone keels over in a paint shop. When he doesn't respond properly to treatment they figure out that he's not the color the pin on his lapel suggests. And a girl they saw in the shop shows up again in the town they're sent to with no apparent means of getting from one place to the other that fast. Pretty much the entire town seems to be corrupt. And there's a naked man covered in mud that everyone pretends they can't see who is living in the upper floor of their house.

Yummy and I both picked up this audio book individually from each other. Mostly because we like the author. This book is a departure from his usual body of work, but I liked it anyway... eventually. I look forward to the prequel to this coming out some time in 2015 or so.