Deckle Edge, 394 pages
English language
Published Sept. 3, 2013 by Nan A. Talese.
A man-made plague has swept the earth, but a small group survives, along with the green-eyed Crakers – a gentle species bio-engineered to replace humans. Toby, onetime member of the Gods Gardeners and expert in mushrooms and bees, is still in love with street-smart Zeb, who has an interesting past. The Crakers’ reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is hallucinating; Amanda is in shock from a Painballer attack; and Ivory Bill yearns for the provocative Swift Fox, who is flirting with Zeb. Meanwhile, giant Pigoons and malevolent Painballers threaten to attack.
Told with wit, dizzying imagination, and dark humour, Booker Prize-winning Margaret Atwood’s unpredictable, chilling and hilarious MaddAddam takes us further into a challenging dystopian world and holds up a skewed mirror to our own possible future.
I liked this. A good conclusion to the series. Really liked the character development in this one.
DNF @ around 50%
I liked the first two books of the trilogy much more than MaddAddam- I loved learning more about Zeb's backstory, and the ever-expanding web between all of the characters. The setting is dark, the word-building is creative, and the books leave me with plenty to think about in the real world where we're juggling climate collapse and a global pandemic. I was thoroughly bummed by the only explicitly gay character being an "evil assassin"- can we please end the trope that the LGBTQ person is the villain?
It's not a bad book at all if it's the third in a series of 4 or 5, but as a summation of a trilogy, Atwood answered the wrong questions (as I see it) set up in the first two novels. The question I had after the first was 'Why?' and after the second, 'How?' At no point in the first two did I ask, 'Hey, what's up with the back story on that Zeb character, huh?'
This is why I avoid series fiction. I think we're making a balaclava with these threads; the author thinks we're making a sweater with matching mittens and a little woolen wallet that you'll thank her for as politely as can be but then hide away in a hutch drawer somewhere never to be seen again. Who even uses a knitted wallet?! Well, maybe if it were felted after - that could be alright... …
It's not a bad book at all if it's the third in a series of 4 or 5, but as a summation of a trilogy, Atwood answered the wrong questions (as I see it) set up in the first two novels. The question I had after the first was 'Why?' and after the second, 'How?' At no point in the first two did I ask, 'Hey, what's up with the back story on that Zeb character, huh?'
This is why I avoid series fiction. I think we're making a balaclava with these threads; the author thinks we're making a sweater with matching mittens and a little woolen wallet that you'll thank her for as politely as can be but then hide away in a hutch drawer somewhere never to be seen again. Who even uses a knitted wallet?! Well, maybe if it were felted after - that could be alright... probably still too thick, though... Wait, is this why we call stories 'yarns'?
Also, no more dystopic lit for me; I'm starting to lose hope for the future.
But I love Margaret Atwood - beautiful writing, tremendous imagination. Probably spot-on on a future that we should all have started preparing for long ago. Off to get some canned goods and a crank radio.
A satisfying conclusion to a... challenging series. At least I'm not as frustrated with this as I was with The Hunger Games.
