- miko || 巫女 -

MaddAddam is the third and final novel in Atwood's post-apocalyptic series that started with Oryx and Crake. I read the second one (The Year of the Flood) relatively recently and found it underwhelming, you may recall. I'm happy to say that this one did improve my overall impression of the series, though I suspect that I enjoyed the first novel most.

So, while the first two books were concurrent with different characters, the third starts right after those and continues with both sets of characters surviving together in the decimated world. With one exception (the new information about the genetic spliced creatures), the current-time story (surviving) isn't very notable. Most of the book is actually about one character's history, Zeb, and about another character retelling it to the Crakers. The style is readable, though a bit put on toward the end when one of the Crakers is actually telling the story.

The book went by fast and I liked it well enough, but I wouldn't say it was mindblowing. It did redeem The Year of the Flood a fair bit.

I don't really know how I felt about this novel, other than a bit surprised that someone will be defending it for Canada Reads this year. Admittedly, I'm disconnected in the sense that I don't really remember Oryx and Crake clearly (the first in the series, that happens mostly concurrently)... and I think I may have been feverish through part of my reading of The Year of the Flood. I'd say that it was an enjoyable enough read, but I didn't really feel strongly for the two main characters (I, in fact, couldn't remember whose chapters I was reading most of the time), and the background concept was already familiar, presumably because I did read the other book even if it's vague to me now.

The book is post-apocalyptic and follows two survivors, but most of it is flashbacks to pre-apocalypse... and neither of the narrators are particularly notable to the apocalypse plot.

I don't know. I'll probably order MaddAddam and give it a shot; it's supposed to actually continue into the future which would likely be a bit better for me.