The book is framed with emotional flashbacks to Christian’s youth, from his early years with a “crack whore” of a mother, abused by “her pimp,” to his later childhood, learning to be a part of the loving family that adopted him. It is not every day that an author has a chance to recast a polarizing character, and James works hard to do that. With “Grey,” James sets out to explore those shades and explain Christian’s controlling tendencies, which had critics of the series questioning the health of Ana and Christian’s relationship and BDSM practitioners arguing that this couple provides a poor representation of the dominant/submissive lifestyle.

He’s unquestionable “fifty shades of up.” He’s everything he warned Ana he was in the original book. It is a behemoth of a book, 557 pages of Ana and Christian’s fraught and at times unsettling love story, here made more unsettling by the truth that fans already know: Christian is not just dark and mysterious. It retells the story of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and the earliest section of “Fifty Shades Darker” from Christian’s perspective. However one feels about the series, there’s no denying that “Grey,” released worldwide Thursday, is a completist’s dream. With 125 million copies of the “Fifty Shades” series in print, there are few readers who don’t know precisely how they feel about EL James’s juggernaut of a series and its hero, Christian - the twitching palm that launched a million fantasies. Others are just hoping they can survive the day without running into the megalomaniacal sociopath. Grey to see them now are receiving the gift they’ve been waiting for.

June 18 was Christian Grey’s birthday, and readers who have been desperate for the dreamy Mr.

Freed by christian grey