Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

I can't convey how it pains me that I didn't love this book. It took me six months to read this book (a relative LIFETIME), and I refused to give up - I even re-started it once, trying soooo hard to understand and love this book. To no avail.

Future humans aren't really our kind of human - they're created, live, get sick, are healed and even destroyed based on the colors they can see. Marriage among complimentary colors are forbidden, and most people have arranged marriages based on bettering themselves and their offspring on the color scale. Society is based on a set of rules, merits, and feedbacks (like ebay escaped into real life), the past is being systematically erased, and trees can eat you.

It seems like Fforde has great aspirations of current social criticism with this story, but either I'm too obtuse or too American to get it (Fforde is British).

I have loved, loved, loved his other books - laughed out loud while reading them and hand-sold them to tons of our library patrons. But this one passed me by. Unfortunately, Fforde says this is the first in a series; he's got titles for the next two books at the end of this one.

I wish he'd put his efforts elsewhere.