![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepot(First, a little note about The Gentleman's Daughter - I'm only in the intro but there's historiography and she's talking about how social power =/= economic power and how primary sources that go on about evil awful women doing nothing to enrich society could just as easily be about the writer's issues with women as women suddenly becoming time-wasters. Nice!)
Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde. He is a magnificent bastard.
Okay, for this post to work you need to add ?format=light to your URL, because the ending is kind of whoa and I want to do white-text to hide the spoilers.
The first great thing is the premise. This is a Future Dystopia world - possibly 100,000 years in the future or so? - but it has the flavor of a Wodehouse novel. Something like every twenty years or so they have a Great Leap Backwards, where they have to abandon all technology that's more modern than the new mandated period. So at the time of the book, they're driving Model Ts and such. Also, all of the rules of society that were unwritten in the period are mandated as well. Yet at the same time, there are all of these trappings of the internet: 1) people wear these little badges ("1000 Merits", "Liar", etc.) that are sort of like the tags that get put under your name on forums or Amazon reviews; 2) people have little "Friend?" "Friend," exchanges to become friends, and I think it's officially monitored because you can only have so many; 3) they do chat rooms through the pipes in Morse code. And although it's a dystopia it's pretty funny in its dystopic elements - enormous swans are a huge danger outside cities, spoons aren't allowed to be manufactured, the terrible disease everyone is frightened of is called "the Mildew" ...
But the other interesting part of the premise is that people can only see one color* (everything else is a dull grey, I think) and have been modified somehow to not be able to see in dim light or dark, which keeps them from basically doing anything at night since they're all terrified of the dark. There's a strict hierarchy of colors - people who can see purple are at the top, I'm not sure what order the rest are except that Greens are higher than Reds, and Greys are at the bottom and are a mistreated proletariat class. (This is all blatantly based on the Munsell color system.) People who have higher perceptions of their own color have higher social status as well. There's more to marriages than just your own standing and money - there's a lot of focus on doing it for future generations, as you can't change your own status on your own, since it's genetically based - and parents are much more involved and shameless about it than in the 1920s. You see parents offering to let people have "an evening" with their daughters to try them out. D:
*Although there's "artificial color" that can be applied as paint or come through the National color grid that anybody can see
The main character, Eddie Russett, is the son of a swatchman (equivalent to a doctor, they show people different colors to cure them of various illnesses and injuries. These swatches are visible to everyone. Greens produce a calming effect, and are taken as drugs, with the Green Room being painted a specific shade and people go in there to die peacefully) and is sent out west with his father, who's replacing the last swatchman in East Carmine, to do a "chair census" as a punishment. He's on half-promise to be married to Constance Oxblood, a very high-class girl, but he meets and falls in love with Jane Grey, who is a total badass and punches people even though violence is a Huge No. They complement each other amazingly and make a perfect team when she finally starts to trust him.
It also has a complete downer ending. (highlight to read, if you're in light format)
- The flipside of those healing swatches is that it transpires that the Mildew, which killed Eddie's mother, is actually caused by a color, described as "greeny-red". People only get the Mildew when the government determines that they need to be killed. The one bright spot is that Eddie's father has never lost anyone to Mildew and wasn't his wife's doctor, so you know that he's been resisting orders to kill people.
- It turns out that the potential troublemakers who are sent to "Reboot" are actually killed. Not a big shocker, really, as you knew it was coming in the grand tradition of all dystopic novels, but instead of the train taking them to Emerald City it takes them to High Saffron, this dead, blocked-off town that Eddie and Jane and some others are sent to explore at the end of the book, where they see a plaza (I think) painted that green-red. They die and the high-tech road eats them.
- But since they're supposed to be alive, their post-code ID numbers (just go with it, too complicated to explain) can't be reallocated to someone else. The government only allows children to be born when post-codes open up, basically, to keep the population stable, only since there are hundreds and hundreds of people they're pretending are still alive, the population is actually dangerously low.
- Damian and Imogen, a Grey and a strong Purple who are madly in love and running away together, are put on the train that runs to High Saffron instead of the Emerald City express. Eddie can't argue with the Colorman (government guy) about it because then he'll know that Eddie and Jane and others know the truth about Reboot. So Damian and Imogen are going to be killed for pretty much no reason, all happy and thinking they're going to start a life together. T_T My one hope is that it's revealed in the sequel that they get off the train or something.
- Eddie and Jane are planning on getting married by the end, which will raise Jane up to be a Russett and give her more power to do awesome stuff, but when they take their Ishihara Color Tests, as everyone does at the age of 20, it turns out that while Eddie is incredibly Red, Jane is actually not a Grey but a very very minor Green. (And it's implied that she's not, that the Colorman was bribed to say she was, and the tests are never repeated.) Which means they can't get married after all, since it's illegal to marry a complementary color. So Eddie has to marry Violet deMauve, the truly awful snob who did many rotten things through the course of the story. This seriously hit me so hard, I can't even. At the end he's planning to use his position to try to fix society and help the Greys, but ... so sad. Damian and Imogen are sadder, but at least they're together.
Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde. He is a magnificent bastard.
Okay, for this post to work you need to add ?format=light to your URL, because the ending is kind of whoa and I want to do white-text to hide the spoilers.
The first great thing is the premise. This is a Future Dystopia world - possibly 100,000 years in the future or so? - but it has the flavor of a Wodehouse novel. Something like every twenty years or so they have a Great Leap Backwards, where they have to abandon all technology that's more modern than the new mandated period. So at the time of the book, they're driving Model Ts and such. Also, all of the rules of society that were unwritten in the period are mandated as well. Yet at the same time, there are all of these trappings of the internet: 1) people wear these little badges ("1000 Merits", "Liar", etc.) that are sort of like the tags that get put under your name on forums or Amazon reviews; 2) people have little "Friend?" "Friend," exchanges to become friends, and I think it's officially monitored because you can only have so many; 3) they do chat rooms through the pipes in Morse code. And although it's a dystopia it's pretty funny in its dystopic elements - enormous swans are a huge danger outside cities, spoons aren't allowed to be manufactured, the terrible disease everyone is frightened of is called "the Mildew" ...
But the other interesting part of the premise is that people can only see one color* (everything else is a dull grey, I think) and have been modified somehow to not be able to see in dim light or dark, which keeps them from basically doing anything at night since they're all terrified of the dark. There's a strict hierarchy of colors - people who can see purple are at the top, I'm not sure what order the rest are except that Greens are higher than Reds, and Greys are at the bottom and are a mistreated proletariat class. (This is all blatantly based on the Munsell color system.) People who have higher perceptions of their own color have higher social status as well. There's more to marriages than just your own standing and money - there's a lot of focus on doing it for future generations, as you can't change your own status on your own, since it's genetically based - and parents are much more involved and shameless about it than in the 1920s. You see parents offering to let people have "an evening" with their daughters to try them out. D:
*Although there's "artificial color" that can be applied as paint or come through the National color grid that anybody can see
The main character, Eddie Russett, is the son of a swatchman (equivalent to a doctor, they show people different colors to cure them of various illnesses and injuries. These swatches are visible to everyone. Greens produce a calming effect, and are taken as drugs, with the Green Room being painted a specific shade and people go in there to die peacefully) and is sent out west with his father, who's replacing the last swatchman in East Carmine, to do a "chair census" as a punishment. He's on half-promise to be married to Constance Oxblood, a very high-class girl, but he meets and falls in love with Jane Grey, who is a total badass and punches people even though violence is a Huge No. They complement each other amazingly and make a perfect team when she finally starts to trust him.
It also has a complete downer ending. (highlight to read, if you're in light format)
- The flipside of those healing swatches is that it transpires that the Mildew, which killed Eddie's mother, is actually caused by a color, described as "greeny-red". People only get the Mildew when the government determines that they need to be killed. The one bright spot is that Eddie's father has never lost anyone to Mildew and wasn't his wife's doctor, so you know that he's been resisting orders to kill people.
- It turns out that the potential troublemakers who are sent to "Reboot" are actually killed. Not a big shocker, really, as you knew it was coming in the grand tradition of all dystopic novels, but instead of the train taking them to Emerald City it takes them to High Saffron, this dead, blocked-off town that Eddie and Jane and some others are sent to explore at the end of the book, where they see a plaza (I think) painted that green-red. They die and the high-tech road eats them.
- But since they're supposed to be alive, their post-code ID numbers (just go with it, too complicated to explain) can't be reallocated to someone else. The government only allows children to be born when post-codes open up, basically, to keep the population stable, only since there are hundreds and hundreds of people they're pretending are still alive, the population is actually dangerously low.
- Damian and Imogen, a Grey and a strong Purple who are madly in love and running away together, are put on the train that runs to High Saffron instead of the Emerald City express. Eddie can't argue with the Colorman (government guy) about it because then he'll know that Eddie and Jane and others know the truth about Reboot. So Damian and Imogen are going to be killed for pretty much no reason, all happy and thinking they're going to start a life together. T_T My one hope is that it's revealed in the sequel that they get off the train or something.
- Eddie and Jane are planning on getting married by the end, which will raise Jane up to be a Russett and give her more power to do awesome stuff, but when they take their Ishihara Color Tests, as everyone does at the age of 20, it turns out that while Eddie is incredibly Red, Jane is actually not a Grey but a very very minor Green. (And it's implied that she's not, that the Colorman was bribed to say she was, and the tests are never repeated.) Which means they can't get married after all, since it's illegal to marry a complementary color. So Eddie has to marry Violet deMauve, the truly awful snob who did many rotten things through the course of the story. This seriously hit me so hard, I can't even. At the end he's planning to use his position to try to fix society and help the Greys, but ... so sad. Damian and Imogen are sadder, but at least they're together.
