A very interesting dystopia. You are tossed right in to the story and learn about the world as it goes along. Politics, gender,class and wooly mammoths all have their roll to play. Imaginative and fun ( )

When I read "Shades of Grey" by Fforde, I was sold. It ticked all my boxes in its humor and absurdity. When reading this book, I guess I expected something similar, which left me kind of disappointed. The execution was done quite well I think, I really like the way Fforde writes, but the story as a whole was a little forgettable. It introduced us to the new world fairly hurriedly and the story seemed shorter than it should have been as well, I didn't really have the time to get invested in either the story or the world. I think this book should have been part of a larger whole to have been really memorable. ( )

Die Ideen sind super, die Handlung stinklangweilig. ( )

One never knows what to expect from Jasper Fforde. This is a novel about a world changed by climate change but instead of the world being hotter than pre-industrial times the Ice Age never ended. Most people have to hibernate for the winter in order to survive.

Charlie Worthing is a young Welsh person who has just signed up to be a novice in the Winter Consul Service. The Consul Service takes care of all the people hibernating which means that they remain awake during the winter. Many things can go wrong with people as they hibernate: they can wake too early, they can have too little fat to survive, the temperatures can dip too low, vermin...you get the idea. Even when they do successfully wake from hibernation they can exhibit memory loss leaving them with only the ability to walk and eat and, sometimes if they are tricksy, do one other function. Charlie is conducting one such person, called a nightwalker, to Sector Twelve to be examined by HiberTech, a drug company that manufactures Morphenox which inhibits dreams in people hibernating. For most people this allows a good hibernation and reawakening but a few who take Morphenox end up as nightwalkers. Charlie was supposed to drop off their charge and then catch the last train back to Swansea before winter sets in but complications arise and they end up being stuck in Sector Twelve. Their mentor (killed before they even got to Sector Twelve) wanted to explore reports of a viral dream that people in Sector Twelve were experiencing so Charlie decides to continue that investigation. This means they go to work for the Winter Consul in Sector Twelve which is headed by Tocatta, a person that almost everyone Charlie encounters before they meet warns them about. One of the first to tell them that is Aurora, the head of security for HiberTech. When Charlie finally meets Tocatta they realize that Aurora and Tocatta are the same person but the Aurora personality is not aware of what Tocatta does and vice versa. Nothing is ever what it seems in Jasper Fforde's Wales.

Although I thought of Charlie as male when I was listening to this book, after I finished and read some on-line reviews I realized that Fforde never explicitly mentions the protagonist's gender and only uses gender neutral pronouns. I had to do significant revision as I wrote the above review because it is second nature to use gender specific pronouns for me. I may need to work on that. ( )

It has always been a challenge to identify Jasper Fforde’s genre. It got a bit clearer in this book, and though I can hardly claim to have read every book out there, I think I can contend that his perspective is quite unique. It is slightly dystopian, though not post-apocalyptic; it has elements of alternative history, except that it is contemporaneous, so I suppose more like alternative reality. In addition, he doesn’t explain things, but just lets the story unspool, the world he creates just familiar enough to let the reader follow it. Charlie Worthing is awake in the deep winter, when almost everyone else in the world is asleep (which is not a new thing, brought on by climate change or anything -- there are references to the hibernation strategies of ancient peoples as well). He is recruited as a Winter Consul, to help run things while people slumber (after bulking up enough to sustain their stores for many weeks, and taking Morphenox to keep dreams at bay). After hearing rumblings (and experiencing for himself) about viral dreams, he finds himself in the middle of a battle between the Consulate, who are trying to rescue the Nightwalkers (from what I can gather, people who never quite woke up from hibernation, and are trapped in a dream state, not unlike zombies) and the corporation HiberTech (who make money repurposing Nightwalkers), for control of some secret that will change the world of sleep forever. It seems the hapless Charlie may possess the wit to make it all happen, where smarter and more dedicated people have failed. Along the way he falls in love, is beset by Nightwalkers, and learns how to dream, among other unexpected gifts. The beauty and peril of Fforde's worlds is that they are tantalizingly close to our reality, while being firmly rooted in fantasy. ( )