I spent about a week last month reading the novel Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, and although my BFF Mike has put up a great review here, I thought the main character definitely had what it takes to be a Genre Character of the week, so without further ado, Eddie Russett.Eddie lives in a dystopian future, (our existence is referred to as “The Previous”) wherein all society is divided into a class structure based on the member’s perception of colours. Eddie is a Red, who at the beginning of the novel is travelling with his swatchman (healer) father to East Carmine, a town on the Outer Fringes. While there, Eddie has been commanded to perform a chair census as a punishment for a practical joke he played on the prefect’s son of his home town.
I can’t go into much more of the plot as it gets increasingly complicated and by the end of the book I’m pretty certain none of the characters are actually human (or entirely human, anyway). Eddie himself starts out as a teenager who believes he has planned out his entire life only to discover that life has plans for him far outside of his wildest dreams.
As a character, Eddie is cursed with a curious nature, always focusing on asking the why’s of various things, and it is exactly this curiousity which will control his destiny.
The book appears to be the first of a trilogy, and as the others are not yet published it might be worthwhile to wait if you don’t like taking breaks between sequels.
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