Fforde Ffebruary: Shades of Grey SPOILERS!

This is the spoiler thread for Shades of Grey, not to be confused with the general discussion thread. Here thar be spoilers!

Things that made me chuckle:

1. Their map of the World That Was is a Risk game board.
2. The allusions to the Wizard of Oz.
3. Friend requests. Much like facebook. :)

HRO, the Risk joke totally cracked me up!

Did anyone else think that the revelation about High Saffron was a bit of a letdown? I had assumed all along that "reboot" was a euphemism for some kind of particularly nasty death. So in the end, I was actually surprised that it shocked Eddie and the other characters so much.

I was surprised that High Saffron was the Night Train's destination, but I had also assumed that reboot = death.

I'm still not totally sure I understand the Mildew. They show people a paint swatch, then they get sick? Surely someone would have seen that happen, and there would have been rumors. And what did Eddie's mother do to warrant getting the Mildew? And the people at High Saffron, they get the mildew and then get eaten by the roads, or do they get eaten by the roads first? I thought it was clever that the roads couldn't eat the heme in the blood.

Yeah I think the High Saffron was a bit too deritive of every other dystopia out there (oh and luckily so nearby too), but then much of it was a homage to other books. I guess the worlds so clever I wanted a bit more from it.

I did love the roads and that those tantalising unanswered questions I.e those ubiquitous barcodes :)