I will happily call myself a Jasper Fforde fan. I love the Thursday Next series and really like the nursery crimes series, when I heard Fforde had a new series coming out I was really excited but managed to hold myself off from actually buying it until it came out in paperback.I had heard that Shades of Grey was different from anything else by Jasper Fforde so was a little concerned that I might not like it. Initially I did find things a little confusing, probably because the world that Shades of Grey is set it is so similar but so different from our own, but after a while I began to understand a little more and as the story got going I began to get gripped by it, finding it difficult to put down.I would still say I prefer the Thursday Next novels because they're a bit easier to get your head around but there are also things that I prefered about Shades of Grey. Overall I found the character's more engaging. I especially liked Jane- she was so strong and didn't care about what others thought of her so long as she was doing what she thought was right. I think she could quite easily be seen as a bit of a feminist icon. I liked Violet too because she was so beautifully horrible and manipulative, in some ways she was quite similar to Jane but she directed that energy in different ways. It was more serious than Thursday Next to in that it looked at issues we have in our world but from a different angle, I liked that because I like books that make you think, but it still had the familiar Jasper Fforde humour so wasn't depressing, 
 I can't wait for the next in the series.