Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde, 2024

Red Side Story is the sequel to the wonderfully imaginative Shades of Grey (2009), which I should stress straightaway has absolutely no connection with the book with ’50’ in its name. Fifteen years is a long time to wait for a sequel (unless you are George R R Martin) and I was worried that the author had lost interest in the fascinating world of chromatacians (bear with me) that he had created, or couldn’t work out where to take the story. But all our patience has definitely been rewarded.

As we know from Shades of Grey, the story is set in a version of the UK (more specifically, Wales) where every aspect of your position in society depends on your ability to perceive parts of the colour spectrum. Colour vision is extremely limited in this society. Some people – ‘Greys’ – have no colour vision at all and are the equivalent of untouchables; others are divided into the colours they can see with more senior roles given to those with the better colour sensitivity. Society is governed by an extremely rigid set of rules set out in Munsell’s ‘Book of Harmony’. Technology is largely forbidden, with a few exceptions. It is a bizarre, but at the same time recognisable world. It is also quite brutal – people are killed (by being shown a shade of green which acts like a deadly poison) for any small infraction of the rules. There are signs of the civilisation that came before the Something that Happened’ five hundred years earlier, but very little understanding of that society.

The novel picks up where Shades of Grey left off. IN East Carmine on the fringes of Red Sector West, Eddie Russett and Jane Grey, having discovered that there is something profoundly wrong with their society, have determined to do something about it. But first they have to escape the trumped-up murder charges they are due to imminently face. Eddie has also recently found out that his perception of the colour red is very high, meaning he is highly valued in the marriage market. But once his seed has been sown any protection he derives from his colour perception will be gone. Slowly Eddie and Jane piece together clues that show them their society could possibly be a vast social engineering experiment, monitored by drones that they have been taught to think as swans. Everyone carries a bar code imprinted on their fingers, allowing the ‘swans’ to locate them at any time – hence the reason wearing gloves is not allowed.

The novel’s parables aren’t hard to unlock – they aren’t meant to be. Treating people as unequal simply because of their physical characteristics is bad. Dogmatic adherence to out of date rules of dubious authority is stupid. We should be able to love who we want to love, not have to trade our fertility like cattle. And so on. But the novel is at no point preachy – this is just Eddie and Jane’s world, and they are heroic in their struggles to find the truth, risking their lives over and over again. I don’t think there’s ever any doubt they will succeed.

Red Side Story can be read as a standalone novel, but I would recommend reading Shades of Grey first. Not because you really need it to work out what is going on in the later novel, but because it is a great story. Fforde is a unique author – comparisons to Pratchett (in the Independent’s review below) for example are wide of the mark. Possibly the nearest in terms of imaginativeness would be the wonderful Douglas Adams and there really is no higher praise. The inventiveness of Fforde’s stories is just the start – what is really impressive is the way he manages to sustain an idea and populate a believable universe without drawing on folk tales or mythologies as most fantasy authors do. This makes him instantly recognisable as an author. Add to this mix his consistently progressive narratives and some great jokes (and there I will accept a comparison with Pratchett, because some of the puns are a bit painful – for example the menacing Undertoad) and you have an author in superb control of his material and a wonderful, whimsical and at the same time brutal story.

The internet seems to think there will be a third novel in the series – I do hope so, and that we don’t have to wait 15 years!

What other reviews have said: a selection

‘Fforde is one of literature’s most enjoyable visionaries, and his long-awaited Shades of Grey sequel will be eagerly seized upon by his admirers… The jokes are excellent, the pacing breathless and the last line a classic’ ​Observer

‘Fforde’s books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted . . . and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett’ ​Independent

‘No summaries can do justice to the sheer inventiveness, wit, complexity, erudition, unexpectedness and originality’ ​The Times

Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde, 2024