18 & Over Book Blogger Follow #18: Is it 2013 yet?

18 & Over Book Blogger Follow is a weekly feature that runs over the weekend, hosted by Crystal from one of my favourite blog sites, Reading Between the Wines.

Question of the Week:  What are the Top 5 Books that you are looking forward to in 2013?

Apologies, folks! I haven’t been around for a while, and I haven’t done one of these follows for ages, but this looked like a good one to join in on.

Obviously, my first must-buy for 2013 will be Lover At Last by J.R. Ward. I know a lot of people are really looking forward to March when it comes out.

I can’t wait for Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi, because Shatter Me was one of my fave books this year. Can’t wait to see what happens next.

Julie James is another auto-buy, so Love, Irresistibly is expected to be really good.

I don’t have the cover for it yet, but Burned by Karen Marie Moning should be good. I haven’t read Iced yet – it isn’t available here, much to my annoyance – but this series is pure win and you can’t have enough Barrons or Ryodan.

And my number five, again with no cover yet, is Painting by Numbers by Jasper Fforde. The first book in this series, Shades of Grey, was amazing!

What about you? What are you looking forward to in 2013? Leave a comment below or link up HERE to follow the meme.

One of Our Thursdays is Missing, by Jasper Fforde

Format: Trade Paperback, 388 pages

Published: January 1, 2011

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Back cover blurb:

It is a time of unrest in the BookWorld.

Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld or is this something more sinister?

All is not yet lost. Living at the quiet end of speculative fiction is the written Thursday Next, eager to prove herself worthy of her illustrious namesake.

The fictional Thursday is soon hot on the trail of her factual alter-ego, and quickly stumbles upon a plot so fiendish that it threatens the very BookWorld itself.

My review:

This was kind of like a Thursday Next book when you aren’t having a Thursday Next book, and it felt a bit tacked on at the end of the series. Having said that, though, I really enjoy this world of books and literary in-jokes, and Fforde is so witty you almost forgive him anything. I loved Sprockett, the clockwork butler, and the sly digs at the likes of vanity publishing and fanfiction, but missed Landon and Mycroft and the real Braxton. And how did Thursday get back across the bridge from Fanfiction without being shot by the gameshow hosts?Fforde is an auto-buy for me and I hope the next book in his colour-based series Shades of Grey is out soon.

My rating: 4/5

Shades of Grey, by Jasper Fforde

Format: Trade paperback, 448 pages

Published: January 14, 2010

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Back cover blurb:

Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane — a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed. For Eddie, it’s love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey …If George Orwell had tripped over a paint pot or Douglas Adams favoured colour swatches instead of towels …neither of them would have come up with anything as eccentrically brilliant as Shades of Grey.

My review:

Jasper Fforde’s usual fare is more along the lines of far-fetched fiction, and I have loved all his previous works, so I began this believing it would be more of the same. I was wrong. This book is epic.

Set hundreds of years in the future, after the Something That Happened – no one knows exactly what – people can no longer see in full colour. What parts of the spectrum you can see determine your social standing, with Purples at the top and Greys – those who can see little or no colour – at the very bottom. Eddie Russett, a Red, is sent with his father to far-flung East Carmine after playing a joke on a Purple boy, and slowly he begins to discover how seriously restricted society has become because of the mysterious and ridiculous Rules. Along his journey he earns the ire of some prominent Yellows and falls in love with a Grey named Jane, who seems to know a bit more than anyone else about what’s really going on. For a start, she knows where all the spoons have gone…

Eddie is a fantastic fish-out-of-water with whom the reader can easily identify as he uncovers the secrets of his dystopia. Jane is kick-ass and smart, and the other village characters are all well-written and, dare I say, colourful. By the last page I was really horrified by the choice Eddie was faced with, and these twists set the story up nicely for two planned sequels.

Fforde has created a unique future which is complex, frightening and very funny. I can’t wait until the next book in the series, Painting by Numbers, comes out in 2013.

My rating: 5/5