Shades of grey was a bit more difficult to be pulled into than Fforde's other novels I've enjoyed (I've read both the Thursday Next series and the Nursery Crimes books). The dry wit and "clever" conversation between father and son in much of the beginning of the book was tiring. I also had trouble following some of the basic plot points FForde was trying to lay out for readers as his characters discussed the finer points of a caste system determined by the colors one can perceive. Things picked up midway through the novel though, and once they got interesting, they never fell back down. As soon as I was invested in the characters I wanted answers. Why can people only see part of the color spectrum? What happened to take society from pre color caste to post? Fforde takes readers to a cliffhanger ending and now I sit, waiting impatiently for the next novel in what I hope is a long series.
L ast year I reviewed Expeditions and ranked it #1 among all Stonemaier games on account of the challenging intellectual puzzle it presents. This year I have played my way through the new expansion, Gears of Corruption , and I’m delighted to let you know that it makes the base game even better. That the expansion so cohesively builds on the base game should not be a surprise to anyone who closely examines the original box for Expeditions. All expansion components perfectly fit in that box including the 2 new mechs that nestle in the placeholder cubbies clearly made for them. That can’t be coincidence. There might a few features rolled into Corruption of Gears that were developed as a result of consumer feedback on the base game (I’m looking at you, wild meeple), but my theory is that Stonemaier did a Lord of the Rings maneuver with this game and its expansions, designing the entire game with most of the additions integrated up front, and then breaking it into base + expansions fo...
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