Red Side Story by Jasper FfordeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've been waiting for about a decade now for Jasper Fforde to finally give us the sequel to Shades of Grey, and while he's been dabbling in some really oddball experiments the last few years - most of which have never worked out for me as a reader - I'm happy to report that his long-delayed return to Chromatacia is also the return to form, reminding me of exactly why Fforde became one of my favorite writers in my college years.
Picking up roughly where the first book left off, Eddie Russett (soon to be renamed deMauve as part of a highly unwanted marriage - and while we're on the subject, what a delicious irony it always was, that the upper-crust Purples had no choice but to intermarry with lower-class Reds in order to maintain their status) and Jane Grey (now renamed Brunswick after her Ishihara results revealed her to be a very light Green) have to fend off the pernicious Gamboge family's attempts to put them to death and avenge Cortland Gamboge's death in Book 1, while also figuring out a way to overturn the color-based dictatorship of this world, before Eddie's father (who isn't really his father) gets all of East Carmine punished for his refusal to go along with the powers that be and their sinister use of the Mildew. Along the way, they'll have to scrounge up all the remaining spoons in another lost village, plan around the Jollity Fair, and make sure they've topped off on their Gordini protocols.
The book takes its time to get to its ending, but then when that ending arrives, it's a race to the finish. And even then, while many secrets (particularly about the origins of the Colortocracy) are revealed, there's still clearly so much more story to tell. I sincerely hope Fforde doesn't take another 10-15 years to write the third book in the series, though I'll understand if he still takes another year or two to give us another long-awaited book next - another adventure for Thursday Next.
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