Book Review - Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron, by Jasper Fforde
Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
If you're a Jasper Fforde fan, don't let my low rating deter you. This book is pure Fforde: a maelstrom of crazy ideas that somehow coalesces into a coherent, if weird, world. The world that Fforde has created here was the biggest draw, for me; I loved delving into this strange society, where the colors that a person can see determines their social standing.
My main disappointment with the book was that it really wanted to be several books at once. Somewhere in Shades of Grey, there's a fantastic Victorian-style comedy of manners struggling to get free. Unfortunately, it's competing for space with the Miss Marple-style murder mystery, the high-concept science fiction novel, and the conspiracy thriller. Any of these stories would have been wonderful to read on their own, but none of them are given the opportunity to flourish. Instead of ending up with a unique synthesis of genres, we end up with a tangled mess.
The book does have many good moments, and the ending satisfactorily ties up many of the story's mysteries. (But not all: this book is the first of a series, it would seem.) And as I've said, the world-building at play here is a delight. Even when the muddled genres left me wondering what the plot was, Fforde's ideas kept me reading until the end.
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