After an apocalyptic disaster, Snowman is the sole caretaker of a group of Crakers--a simple-minded, genetically-engineered people. But his past haunts him, and he relives the events leading up to the world-altering disaster.

It's hard for me to write anything about this novel without comparing it to Atwood's brilliant "Blind Assassin". The structure is very similar: an important event happened in the past, and the narrator slowly reveals the past while continuing on their life in their present. It's a tactic that worked well in "The Blind Assassin" because the narrator is a grandmother that I'm sure every reader could relate to. However, in "Oryx and Crake", the narrator is a crusty, disgruntled, semi-isolated man who is about as unappealing and uninteresting as a character can get. With "The Blind Assassin", the past event is a death, and we are intrigued right from the beginning because of the human connection, and we automatically want to know what happened and why. With "Oryx and Crake", the past event is an apocalypse, and somehow the what and why seem like trivialities. Really, it could have been any number of disasters and it wouldn't have made one bit of difference to the story. Pick your disaster. There's no intrigue despite all the background story Atwood conjures up because the characters are only moderately interesting.

One of the few redeeming things about the novel is the social structure that Atwood creates. It's an interesting society we become in her story. It's not too far off from our current model, and as such, offers a nice commentary on where we may be heading. In addition to this, it also offers a discussion about men playing God--in both senses of the concept. One, by creating and destroying the lives of others as if they are wise and all-knowing. Second, in the sense of creating mythology and doctrine for people to follow.

If you're a fan of the genre, then give it a try--just keep your expectations low. If you're a fan of good writing and characters, perhaps "The Blind Assassin" is the way to go as it seems to me with this novel Atwood was too caught up in her creation of the Crakers that she thought she was writing a story for them as well. I expected better.

Here's a spoiler and a major problem that wasn't addressed in the story: Why didn't Jimmy just duplicate the vaccine that Crake had been secretly giving him when he visited the Pleeblands? Surely the technology existed to do it quite easily.