While I don't believe this novel is as trite as other reviewers have suggested, the occasion and project of this work are very different from Handmaid's Tale and I'm grateful to Atwood for choosing optimism. It isn't fair to ask an artist to write in the midst of a storm. I believe the best novels about the beginning of our century are still decades off, but for what this is, a continuation of an impactful story partially written by other people as a television series so entwined with our political moment it has become an active synecdochical representation in international activist movements, it is incredible. I mean just for existing. Atwood was able to produce some kind of meaningful content knee deep in a river's flow.

Some aspects that struck me while reading: her use of wordplay in this novel may not have had the weight of the first novel but the period being described is very different. This is the end of Gilead so it made a lot of sense to employ malapropism for various idiomatic phrases as a demonstration of language's mutability under power (or subversion).

The escape to sea had an interesting parallel with Lanchester's The Wall. Returning to sea seems to figure strongly for authors writing their way out of oppression this year. I hope this doesn't mean I need to build an ark. Either way, I'll keep looking to rainbows as a sign of hope.

Finally, the ending (no spoilers). I'll just say I liked it.