Part I of a new series from Thursday Next author, Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grade: Road to High Saffron introduces you to a future society after the “Great Something” happens. You follow young adult Eddie Russett as he tries to decide on a career and marriage and moves into adulthood. As long as anyone can remember, society has been ruled by a colortocracy: a social hierarchy based upon one’s limited color perception. In this world, you are, what you can see.

Eddie Russet, with his better-than-average red perception, could marry Constance Oxblood and inherit the string works; he may even have enough red perception to make prefect.

But everything changes when he is sent to East Carmine for “humility training.” There, he falls in love with a Grey named Jane who opens his eyes to the painful truth behind his seemingly perfect, rigidly controlled society.