Books: Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde (2024)

 “Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. Civilization has been rebuilt after an unspoken “Something that Happened” five hundred years ago. Society is now color vision-segregated, professions, marriages, and leisure activities all dictated by an individual’s visual ability, and everything run by the shadowy National Color in far-off Emerald City. Out on the fringes of Red Sector West, twenty-year-old Eddie Russett is being bullied into an arranged marriage with the powerful DeMauve family, purples who hope to redden up their progeny’s color-viewing potential with Eddie’s gene stock. Their obnoxious daughter Violet is confident the marriage won’t hamper her style for too long because Eddie is about to go on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, and he’s pretty sure to be sent on a one-way trip to the Green Room for execution by soporific color exposure. Meanwhile, Eddie is engaged in an illegal relationship with his co-defendant, a Green, the charismatic, unpredictable, and occasionally deadly Jane Grey. Time is running out for Eddie and Jane to figure out how to save themselves. Negotiating the narrow boundaries of the Rules within their society, they search for a loophole—some truth of their world that has been hidden from its hyper-policed citizens.”

For the most part, Red Side Story is worth the 15 year gap between this book and Shades of Grey. And much like Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series (which will have an eighth and final novel, Dark Reading Matter, out in 2025), he brings forth similar ideas, but approaches the concept of a totalitarian future society from the same very different, yet skewed perspective. The good part of Red Side Story is we get some answers from the first book, but we still don’t get a clear understanding what the people of Collective are. They act and respond in a very human sort of way, but they also act like automatons much of the time, especially the Yellows who love rules – or highly functioning androids who believe they’re real. We get a better idea that the four sectors of the Chromatacia are some sort game board, I guess (?), or some sort of highly developed physiological computer/hologram program to test people’s reaction to a authoritarian the social order (The Book of Harmony and the tyrannical following of rules, and preventing free-thinking).

While those will be obviously answered in a third book, I was bothered by a few deus ex machine aspects that let them get away from certain death by the last minute intervention from other people. There were at least three very obvious parts, including the trip to Crimsololia and the timely arrival of Hanson (Angel-Creator?) who saves Eddie and Jane from Yellows who were assigned to murder them, drops a cache of Very Important Plot Points, then because he believes he’s killed them, leaves before Jane’s magic key saves them - so no harm no fowl. The second when the escape their doom from the crime of killing the Courtland from the first book, as well as the Yellows, by another timely arrival, and even their escape from Vermillion was too easy.

The Tin Men, along with the Apocryphal Man (named Baxter’s), are other helpful plot devices that make you realize that neither Eddie nor Jane are really solving any mystery of who and what they are –it’s being fed to them one spoonful at a time.

Still, Fforde’s deadpan and satirical humor shines through. His absurd worlds will remind many of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and Monty Python, which plays on the comedy of manners that British still think, is cool.

The set-up for book three is here, as well, but I found the ending a bit disappointing. I sense the plot is leaning towards a more formulaic ending rather than some Big Revelation. But we’ll have to wait see –just, I hope, not another fifteen years!

Books: Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (2009)

 

“Hundreds of years in the future, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of color. Eddie Russett is an above-average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed. For Eddie, it is love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey.”

First released in the UK in 2009 (published in the US in 2010 and I read it in 2011), Shades of Grey was supposed to be the beginning of a new dystopian trilogy situated in Chromatocia, a world ruled by the Colortocracy where color perception has faded and social hierarchy is determined by what colors you can see. 

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned. After writing for nearly decade plus with little time off, author Jasper Fforde schedule a tiny break to recharge his batteries. So after the seventh book in his Thursday Next was released in 2012, and with work already completed on his YA series The Last Dragonslayer: The Eye of Zoltar, which would be released in 2014, he began his leisure activity (mostly photography). But things grew quiet in his world. In his Acknowledgments for his 2018 novel Early Riser, he talks about what delayed this books release. He calls it his “creative hiatus of 2014-2016,” or in plainer language, writer’s block. And thus Early Riser, not a the second Shades of Grey novel, or a Thursday Next, or the fourth novel in The Last Dragonslayer series (which was only supposed to be three books) became his first adult novel to be released in 6 years. As he struggled out the pit, he was finally able to get back work but he’s playing catch up, now.

In my original review in 2011, I found the first half of the book slow going, which is a trademark of many fantasy writers. It does take Fforde a long time to set up his world, slowly revealing how the different colors people see influences their standing in society and the way the government functions as a whole –so at times it becomes a largely a plotless tome of world building, this first half. My opinion has not changed too much, but I did find myself more involved the second time around, which then made me wonder what exactly, is going on in this odd world.

The plot finally does kick in, and provides a satisfying setup for the two sequels. Sadly, no one, let alone Fforde, thought it would take 15 years to get book two. Nevertheless, one hopes that Red Side Story, coming in May of 2024, will go smoother with all the heavy lifting done in this book. We know the third book will not be out next year, as the eighth novel in the Thursday Next series (the last one was 2011) is due in 2025.

For us American’s not familiar with the Western half of the UK, details reveal that East Carmine is located in Wales (the A470 road is mentioned), and the description of the town close to the lower of a series of five dams suggests it is Rhayader, at the foot of the Elan Valley. Nearby Rusty Hill was once Builth Wells. The town of Vermillion used to be Hereford. The town of High Saffron is on the coast beyond the dams, which suggests Aberystwyth.

So, at its base elements, Shades of Grey is just a clever, very elaborate social and political satire –a sub-genre of comedy/humor that British have done so well for decades with. It’s also poking fun at the whole dystopian genre. It is whimsical, without being to over the top and its verbal wordplay will remind many of Douglas Adams and Monty Python.

I do believe Fforde should be more popular here in the States than he currently is, but I also understand that satire –be it political, social, or dystopian - is not everyone’s cup of tea. But he really is a very witty man with an ingenious, sharp and adroit talent for finding a joke in the oddest of places.  

Books: The Great Troll War by Jasper Fforde (2021)

"Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekick and fellow Orphan Tiger Prawns have been driven to the tip of the UnUnited Kingdoms - Cornwall - by the invasion of the Trolls. Their one defense is a six-foot-wide trench full of buttons, something which the Trolls find unaccountably terrifying (it's their clickiness). Worse than being eaten by Trolls is the prospect of the Mighty Shandar requisitioning the Quarkbeast and using him to achieve supreme power and domination - an ambition that has been four hundred years in the planning and which will ultimately leave the Earth a cold cinder, devoid of all life. Nothing has ever looked so bleak, but Jennifer, assisted by a renegade vegan Troll, a bunch of misfit sorcerers, the Princess (or is she now the ruler?) of the UnUnited (or are they now United?) Kingdoms, and Tiger, must find a way to vanquish the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen, and along the way discover the truth about her parents, herself, and what is in the locked glovebox of her VW Beetle." 

The Great Troll War is the concluding book in The Last Dragonslayer book series –released in hardcover in September 2021 in the UK, August of 2022 here, and finally in paperback only a few weeks ago- took seven years to appear, but overall, it’s worth the wait –though for me, since I started to read this series earlier this year, the wait for this last book was only a couple weeks. Jasper Fforde does try hard to give some backstory to the earlier books via footnotes at the bottom of the page, which was probably designed for some fans who did not want to re-read the three previous books –though there some other humorous ones. The scope of this book is grander than the previous three, but the themes are similar. Friendship, the fight for justice, and the defeat of evil. We also finally get an explanation of how import the Quarkbeast’s truly are.

Overall, this whole series has been fun, though it does borrow one big plot point from the Harry Potter novels. Fforde has a rich imagination and a love for satire and much like his adult tales, The Last Troll War is filled with many in-jokes, puns, but also some serious themes such as government corruption and the exploitation of marginalized communities; it’s a reflection of the issues and conflicts that exist in the real world, and it encourages readers to think critically about power dynamics and the importance of standing up for what is right.

And taking a page from Stephen King, the author makes a very amusing, sort of anonymous, cameo appearance. And it gets a bit meta…“Well," said the author, “I made George Formby (a British comedian) president-for-life of Great Britain.” “A book about Humpty Dumpty as a police procedural.” “A social order based wholly on the strength of your colour vision” “Is there a sequel?” “Don’t start.” All of this are part of the rich tapestry that Jasper Fforde once described as being "impossible worlds made real".

Overall, another fun book by Fforde, with a fitting conclusion to the series, plus an ending I did not see.

Books: The Eye of Zoltar By Jasper Fforde (2013)

 

“The Mighty Shandar, the most powerful wizard the world has ever seen, returns to the Ununited Kingdoms. Clearly, he didn't solve the Dragon Problem, and must hand over his fee: eighteen dray-weights of gold. But the Mighty Shandar doesn't do refunds, and vows to eliminate the dragons once and for all - unless sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekicks from the Kazam house of enchantment can bring him the legendary jewel, The Eye of Zoltar. The only thing that stands in their way is a perilous journey with a 50% Fatality Index - through the Cambrian Empire to the Leviathan Graveyard, at the top of the deadly Cadir Idris Mountain. It's a quest like never before, and Jennifer soon finds herself fighting not just for her life, but for everything she knows and loves.”

For a book sold as YA, filled with some standard tropes of the genre, The Eye of Zoltar, offers up a slightly darker tale, where bad things are happening to both good and bad people. It’s not grim, though, and death is seen more or less as easily accepted value –the consequences of people’s choices. It’s not there to shock people, in other words.

But what was once touted as trilogy, it seems odd that the supposedly last book took such an odd turn into typical fantasy trope of a quest (even if Jennifer does not want to call it that). It sidelines most of original cast of the first two books, including the Quarkbeast –a creature character that seemed almost as important as Jennifer Strange, but who seems now only be a minor figure in the arc of the series.

So this side-outing does not really propel the narrative of the first two books forward. Still, its enjoyable book filled with wittiness, the cleverness of its world, and some really well-drawn newcomers. I still wish he kept this to a trilogy, but I expect the next book, The Great Troll War to be worth the wait.

Well, in the sense, the paperback version is due in April. A lot of fans of this series had to wait eight years between the 2013 release of this book and the 2021 release of the last –and I’ve been waiting since 2009 for a sequel to Shades of Gray, which should see release in early 2024.

But there was a reason for the long break: writers block. Fforde was a prolific writer for a long time, but he would endure a two year spiral that nearly ended his writing career. As he noted to reporter Alice Cairns: “I wrote 12 books in 12 years, one after the other, and I thought I’d just carry on like that forever. Then, for no reason that I could see, I suddenly hit the buffers and the book I was trying to write (what was to be Early Riser) would not come out. The thing is, it gets worse the more you don’t do it. That’s when the doubts creep in. Is that it? Maybe 12 books is all I am ever going to do?

Early Riser would see a August 2018 release in the UK (February 2019 in the US), followed by the Constant Rabbit in 2020, The Great Troll War in 2022.