GREY
Jon Armstrong
Night Shade Books 2007
Pb 239 pages
ISBN# 10: 1-59780-065-1; 13: 978-1-59780-065-5
This book is funny, gross, witty, crass, weird, beautiful, bizarre, and bloody: ergo--cool! Romeo and Juliet on a futuristic corporate spin-cycle. GREY is a style; a style of dress, a style of thought, the style of a very wealthy and very famous young man named Michael Rivers. His father owns the biggest corporation in the world. For years Michael has been the chief promotional icon for this company [with his father's ever-urgent shoving from behind]. Michael does not come from a loving family. But he does love the woman his father is shoving him towards: it's a corporate merger through marriage [or it was supposed to be until someone tried to assassinate Michael]. Since his father's company manufactures security, this breach in security is enough to send RiverGroup's stock into a plummet. The forces of money and power pull Michael and Nora apart, and send them into danger. The rest of the book is a fast read through a world where highways take cars around the globe in hours, clothes air-condition the wearer and self-clean immediately when soiled, a world where there's a recreational drug that looks like a cockroach and crunches when you bite it.
GREY is a style, the book is for readers who appreciate highly styled writing. Jon Armstrong decorates this style with all sorts of interesting futuristic tidbits. I liked it. The plot twists just enough that it isn't predictable, the characterization is good, and I never once got bored.
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