Can't-Wait Wednesday: Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde, You Like it Darker by Stephen King, & Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung

     

 Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! This meme is based off of Jill @ Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday meme.

Red Side Story (Shades of Grey #2) by Jasper Fforde
Publication: May 7th, 2024 (US)/February 6th, 2024 (UK)
Soho Press (US) / Hodder & Stoughton (UK)
Hardcover. 480 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"The long-awaited follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Shades of Grey—in an exclusive edition for North American readers, complete with a never-before-published short story

Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. Civilization has been rebuilt after an unspoken “Something that Happened” five hundred years ago. Society is now color vision-segregated, professions, marriages, and leisure activities all dictated by an individual’s visual ability, and everything run by the shadowy National Color in far-off Emerald City.

Out on the fringes of Red Sector West, twenty-year-old Eddie Russett is being bullied into an arranged marriage with the powerful DeMauve family, purples who hope to redden up their progeny’s color-viewing potential with Eddie’s gene stock. Their obnoxious daughter Violet is confident the marriage won’t hamper her style for too long because Eddie is about to go on trial for a murder he didn’t commit, and he’s pretty sure to be sent on a one-way trip to the Green Room for execution by soporific color exposure. Meanwhile, Eddie is engaged in an illegal relationship with his co-defendant, a Green, the charismatic, unpredictable, and occasionally deadly Jane Grey. Time is running out for Eddie and Jane to figure out how to save themselves. Negotiating the narrow boundaries of the Rules within their society, they search for a loophole—some truth of their world that has been hidden from its hyper-policed citizens."

I've been anxiously awaiting a sequel to Fforde's Shades of Grey since I read it years ago and I'm so excited that a sequel is finally here! I still need to get around to re-reading the first book before I dive into this one, but I'm unbelievably excited for it!

You Like it Darker by Stephen King
Publication: May 21st, 2024 
Scribner
Hardcover. 512 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.

“Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

King’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it."

I love that this sounds like such a challenge to readers from Stephen King. I've actually not read that much Stephen King, but I'm curious about some of his short horror fiction and am looking forward to this one. 

Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung
Publication: April 9th, 2024
Dell
Paperback. 352 pages.
Pre-order: Amazon | Bookshop.org

From Goodreads:
"A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China, by debut author Eve J. Chung, based on her family story

Daughters are the Ang family’s curse.

In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed.

Without an Ang male to punish, the land-seizing cadres choose Hai, as the eldest child, to stand trial for her family’s crimes. She barely survives their brutality. Realizing the worst is yet to come, the women plan their escape. Starving and penniless but resourceful, they forge travel permits and embark on a thousand-mile journey to confront the family that abandoned them.

From the countryside to the bustling city of Qingdao, and onward to British Hong Kong and eventually Taiwan, they witness the changing tide of a nation and the plight of multitudes caught in the wake of revolution. But with the loss of their home and the life they’ve known also comes new freedom—to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story."

This sounds incredibly gripping and informative and I'm looking forward to having a chance to check it out. 

Can't-Wait Wednesday: Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released! This meme is based off of Jill @ Breaking the Spine's Waiting on Wednesday meme.

This week's upcoming book spotlight is:

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde 
Publication Date: February 12th, 2019

viking
416 pages

Buy: Amazon | Book Depository 

From Goodreads: 

"Every Winter, the human population hibernates. 

During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, devoid of human activity. 

Well, not quite . 

Your name is Charlie Worthing and it's your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses. 

You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams which you dismiss as nonsense; nothing more than a quirky artefact borne of the sleeping mind. 

When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling. 

When you get the dreams too, it's weird. 

When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity. 

But teasing truth from the Winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping, and stamp collecting, ensure you aren't eaten by Nightwalkers, whose thirst for human flesh can only be satisfied by comfort food, and sidestep the increasingly less-than-mythical WinterVolk. 

But so long as you remember to wrap up warmly, you'll be fine."

I love Jasper Fforde and I only found out about this book a few weeks ago! This sounds like classic Fforde and every single thing about it sounds amazing--I've been waiting for a new release from him for so long now. It just came out yesterday actually, but since my library has a decent hold list on it, it might be a while before I can read it so I figured it would still work for this week's pick.

What do you think about this upcoming release? What are your anticipated upcoming releases?

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Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde. Penguin Group Viking Adult, 2009. Hardcover. 400 pages. 

After many, many years of this book sitting on my shelves, I finally picked it up... and immediately found myself enamored with this book.  The only other book I've read by Jasper Fforde is The Eyre Affair, which was also a lot of fun and incredibly well-written. Shades of Grey, in my opinion, was even better.

The best part about Shades of Grey is simply the world itself. Fforde has used so much detail that it's almost hard for me to focus on the story because I'm so impressed by the everyday aspects of the world he has created. In Shades of Grey, being able to see different colors to their fullest extent is not a natural ability. For the inhabitants of this world, the higher on the color spectrum you can see of a specific color, the higher your social standing is as well.

This book throws you right into the story with no training wheels, so I was a little lost in the first chapter or two, but eventually you will learn to catch on. There are some references and comments that I never fully understand, but I'm not sure if we are meant to anyway.

In addition to the fantastic world and overarching ideas presented in this book, there are an abundance of fantastic, wholly unique characters. We have Eddie, our protagonist, his father, a woman named Jane, and an entire cast of fellow town inhabitants that bring so much color (pardon the pun) to this world. Almost everyone has ulterior motives, some harmless and some fairly harmful. I was particularly drawn to the depiction of Eddie's character due to his rather calm, but incredibly relatable nature. He is such a sharp thinker (as are most of these characters, if we're being honest), but also finds himself puzzled by some of the odd behaviour of those around him. At the same time, he's pretty good at  accepting that certain figures are just who they are and continuing on with his life.

This entire book was so original and vivid that I never wanted to leave its pages and do anything else. Instead, I just wanted to keep exploring this quirky world that has endless surprises and random circumstances that I could never predict or expect. That is also why there is absolutely no way I can possible try to explain or summarize this book in any way. The best way to understand it is from this part of the book's summary:

"Eddie's world wasn't always like this. There's evidence of a never-discussed disaster and now, many years later, technology is poor, news sporadic, the notion of change abhorrent, and nighttime is terrifying: no one can see in the dark. Everyone abides by a bizarre regime of rules and regulations, a system of merits and demerits, where punishment can result in permanent expulsion.

Eddie, who works for the Color Control Agency, might well have lived out his rose-tinted life without a hitch. But that changes when he becomes smitten with Jane, a Grey, which is low-caste in this color-centric world. She shows Eddie that all is not well with the world he thinks is just and good. Together, they engage in dangerous revolutionary talk."

This book goes much deeper than you might expect--it was far deeper than I expected, anyway. I loved the different ideas that Fforde played with, all of which really worked well to make me stop and think. The ending itself has a lot of information, and I'm still not sure if I have completely figured everything out, but that only makes it more entertaining in my personal opinion.

Overall, I've given Shades of Grey five stars! I truly enjoyed this book and sincerely hope that Fforde will continue the series sometime!

Buy the book: Amazon || BookDepository

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The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Penguin Books; 2003. 374 pages. Paperback/Softcover.

This was one of the most clever books I have read in quite a while. I lost count of the number of chuckles and laughs that escaped me while reading this book, all due to the charm and clever wit of Fforde's writing and imagination.

The Eyre Affair takes place in the 1980s, but in an alternate world from our own - a place where time travel is considered normal. In this world lives Thursday Next, a Special Operative, LiteraTec who regularly investigates issues revolving around stolen manuscripts and other literary dilemmas and crimes. One day, however, a legendary criminal by the name of Acheron steals Jane Eyre herself from Jane Eyre, and Thursday must find her and save her in order to save the original manuscript and story - which she does by entering into the novel itself.

The Eyre Affair is the exact definition of an unpredictable novel. We're thrust into this alternate 1980s world that is entirely the same, yet entirely different from our regular world. The best part: it's completely centered around literature. I love the added touches that litter the  normal and create such an imaginative world. For example, there are 'Baconians' who go around like religious followers and try to convince people that it was actually Sir France Bacon who penned all of William Shakespeare's works, not Shakespeare himself. I also absolutely loved how dodos have been cloned, brought back from extinction, and are now some of the most popular pets - they seem so adorable. I loved these little details, as they really brought the entire world to life in a very whimsy and exciting way.

On the negative side, sometimes it seemed like there was just too much going on, and I felt a bit... confused. Now, confusion was a rather common feeling for me in this book, as it was a smidge hard to pick up the lingo and figure out who was who and what meant what, but most of the time it went fairly smoothly. It was just too convoluted overall - the Acheron Hades storyline (the main one, which eventually includes the whole Jane Eyre manuscript debacle), her romance (?) with Landen and (kinda?) Bowden, her aunt and uncle's kidnapping (related to Hades, but still different), her father, her career, etc. etc. I just felt lost in this wide world of wit and imagination; all I needed was a nice little guidebook, and it would have been perfect.

Thursday Next is someone who on the surface seems very organized and thoughtful, but she's actually rather impulsive, and also very quick-witted. She's sly, clever, and knows her literature (I mean, she is a LiteraTec, after all). I enjoyed following her on her adventures and learning more about her career, family life, and her overall interact with this crazy world. The Eyre Affair is littered with a large supporting cast that add so much excitement to this book; even the names of these characters was enough to make me happy - Victor Analogy, Braxton Hicks, Jack Schitt. I don't want to go into too many details about these characters or any other elements of the story, however, because while they may not be direct spoilers, I feel like a big part of the enjoyment of The Eyre Affair is in the sheer unpredictability and discovery of everything.

However, while I enjoyed Thursday Next as a character, I never felt like I really got to know her and who she really is as a person. There seemed to be this thin wall placed between the reader and Thursday, which hid some of her personality and prevented me from really connecting with her or understanding her emotions. In fact, she was almost somewhat bland. She had good humor and made quirky jokes with her companions, but there wasn't much other depth. Her backstory had depth, such as her time spent in Crimea and her history with LiteraTec and, but her character lacked depth.

Overall, The Eyre Affair is receiving a nice four stars, because despite it's incredibly fascinating world and enjoyable read, there were issues that could have used improvement, such as with the characters and mash-up of plotlines. I would definitely recommend to any who loves wit, charm, literature and literary-inspired things, or simply anyone who wants an enjoyable read!

Buy the book!

You might also like:

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

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