MaddAddam

I followed the NYTimes’ reveiwer’s recommendation to not short change oneself and start at the beginning with Oryx and Crake and After the Flood, and then onto MaddAddam. I read all 3 in 2 weeks--consumed by the fractured world and compelling characters that Atwood has brought us. A chillingly close and thought provoking extrapolation from our present realities.

I really liked the whole trilogy. The world that is created and the vision of our possible future is deep and rich and fascinating. I liked the characters and wanted to know what would happen to them. I felt like the whole thing sort of fizzled at the end, so it was not quite a satisfying as it might have been, but it was a really good time all the way there, so I would still recommend it.

The least interesting of the trilogy. Ending fairly trite and largely uninteresting. As in the first book, starts off slow with not much happening. Lacks the compelling parts of the latter parts of the first and all of the second book. I gave it a third star because I liked the first two books

"Oryx and Crake" was arguably Margaret Atwood's greatest work, and "Year of the Flood" was pretty good, too. The trouble with "MaddAdam" is that there is nothing much left to say, so most of the book is occupied with filling in the backstories of Adam and Zeb. And unfortunately the jokes about the Crakers and other "splices" aren't funny the second time around.

Final chapter in the trilogy is, as usual, a wonderful read as are Ms. Atwood's other works. As a finale, she allows more time to spend on developing characters, both new and ones we already know from the first 2 books. In terms of post-apocalyptic fiction, Ms. Atwood sets a standard that few other writers in the genre can equal, let alone surpass.

Aspects of this novel are spot on, and others are dated. The bio-tech aspect seems well-researched and unnerving, the religious aspect is creative, but the social aspect (regarding gender or race roles) smacks of the 1970s. That being said, the novel moves well - it makes an engrossing read.

This being the third, and I believe final, book in the series I can say that each successive chapter becomes more boring and drags the fast pace of the first book to a slow crawl. Halfway through the book there is no forward movement of the cast of characters. We spend way too much time learning about Zeb's backstory. Had I known that Jimmy was going to be relegated to the sidelines for so much of this book, I would have reconsidered. Also, the Crakers are the most annoying characters in any book I have read in recent memory.

Finishing the third and final book in the series, I can only say I wish there were a fourth. Ms. Atwood once again wrote a compelling and riveting story of this imagined not-too-distant future. The series ends in a hopeful way, with the potential of a new future for the human race following the "waterless flood" which wiped out most of mankind. A fantasy, or a warning for the possibilities of our current path? That is for each reader to decide.

One gets so caught up in her narrative and attached to the characters that it is only after I finished it that I realized how brilliantly she's prophesized the apocalypse. People will indeed be the engineers of our own demise. Read it. Think about it. Then be the change we need to steer the future away from her prescient and informed predictions.

I like Margaret Atwood as a writer and she creates a landscape familiar yet strange. This was not one of my favorites of her writing. I hard some problems following the "why" for the characters, the platform for the new characters and the belief in their survival is only hope and that is emotional but lacks faith,

This was a fantastic conclusion to the trilogy, in my opinion. I love how the Crakers got a bit corrupted by Toby and developed in ways Crake tried his best to eliminate as possibilities. I also really enjoyed Zeb's back story. And I am happy that Toby had a little happiness after everything she went through before the Waterless Flood. I could write much more, but don't want to include any spoilers.

I am a fan of this particular trilogy. Usually when there are a series of books that I enjoy, I have a bittersweet experience reading the last book in the series. This book was no different. I do not want to spoil the plot or story line, so I would like to simply contain my review to the dislikes:

- Crake's storyline = I'm still torn whether I'm satisfied with how Crake's story plays out in the book. At times his story seems a little bit underdeveloped and shallow, but I also think it could be to make him seem like that on purpose (i.e. the reason he did what he did was more because he could and he wanted to and he is basically a sociopath)

- Crakers = Maybe there is another book for them down the road, but I feel like the book developed their story up until the last two chapters and then conveniently wrapped everything up a little too quickly in order to finish up.

I like Margaret Atwood as a writer and she creates a landscape familiar yet strange. This was not one of my favorites of her writing. I hard some problems following the "why" for the characters, the platform for the new characters and the belief in their survival is only hope and that is emotional but lacks faith,

This was a fantastic conclusion to the trilogy, in my opinion. I love how the Crakers got a bit corrupted by Toby and developed in ways Crake tried his best to eliminate as possibilities. I also really enjoyed Zeb's back story. And I am happy that Toby had a little happiness after everything she went through before the Waterless Flood. I could write much more, but don't want to include any spoilers.

I am a fan of this particular trilogy. Usually when there are a series of books that I enjoy, I have a bittersweet experience reading the last book in the series. This book was no different. I do not want to spoil the plot or story line, so I would like to simply contain my review to the dislikes:

- Crake's storyline = I'm still torn whether I'm satisfied with how Crake's story plays out in the book. At times his story seems a little bit underdeveloped and shallow, but I also think it could be to make him seem like that on purpose (i.e. the reason he did what he did was more because he could and he wanted to and he is basically a sociopath)

- Crakers = Maybe there is another book for them down the road, but I feel like the book developed their story up until the last two chapters and then conveniently wrapped everything up a little too quickly in order to finish up.

Atwood has always preferred to call her work speculative fiction rather than science fiction because she uses existing technologies and cultural trends as the raw materials from which to paint her fictional future. And let's hope that Atwood's speculations are way off, because her imagined future is not only horrifying, it is less than 30 years away. In terms of projecting possibilities, she's borrowing from Ray Kurzweil's math homework, but it's The End that's near, not The Singularity.

Everything about MaddAddam, the immensely readable conclusion to the Oryx and Crake trilogy, is chillingly familiar. The huge compounds of the fictional CorpseCorps bring to mind a certain place in Mountain View, California, where the most "successful, ubiquitous and strange" corporation of our time is employing its army of tech geniuses and bio wonks in an earnest attempt to mine data from every corner of human existence (starting from the genetic code) to "solve death." Let's hope Larry Page has more stringent bio-ethics than Crake, because there's more than one way to skin that particular cat as Atwood points out.

As I read (no, devoured) the final instillation of Atwood's trilogy, I could not help thinking about how much the world has changed in the last decade, since Oryx and Crake was published in 2003. In a less prescient author's hands, that futuristic book could seem antiquated in the span of 10 years. (Let's try to remember 2003, that far away time before Facebook, smart phones, internet purchasing, YouTube, Global Outsourcing, wikipedia, networked gaming, Twitter, etc. etc. etc. were either nonexistent or emergent trends rather than ubiquitous, global realities of daily life.) Instead, the future is shaping up pretty much the way she imagined in many respects. Lab meat is real now; it's called Shmeat and was concocted in a Dutch lab this last summer. The beepocalypse was featured on the cover of Time this year, so don't be surprised if her predictions about ultra-expensive fruit come true by 2024. Let's not forget the whole NSA/Snowden bombshell that has exploded since back in '03 when she imagined a omnipotent government combining forces with an omniscient/omnipresent corporation to hack and mine information about its allies, enemies and citizens alike. And then there's the recent revelations about the seedy, Tor-enabled underbelly of the internet, where child porn, illicit drugs, and hired assassins can be bought and payed for with cyber currency. This is pretty much exactly the same dark-internet-alleys in which the adolescent Crake/Glenn and Snowman/Jimmy bonded over extreme porn and live suicide shows in 2003. And that seemed so incredibly disturbing back in '03. Now it just seems believable. According to Attwood, in another decade it will seem quaint.

My point is, Atwood's speculative fiction has managed, brilliantly and compellingly, to keep pace with a present reality that changes so fast that it feels like the future arrives now in a continuous live feed. I wish there were going to be more novels like this from Atwood, and/or that someone with skill and respect purchases the film rights (and doesn't bastardize the hell out of it, a la Cloud Atlas), because it'd really be something to see the pigoons and rakunks and Crakers and all the other wonderful/horrible bits of her imagination up on the big screen. I think we have the technology now to make it look believable.

This third book in the MaddAddam Trilogy, named for that trilogy, continues with the split story telling of book two but with a twist -- this time it is not as clear who is talking merely by chapter titles. No this time you have to read generally a paragraph or two of each chapter to figure out if the viewpoint is Toby, the former Eve of the Gardeners, MaddAddam himself known by the name of Zeb, or one of the Crakers who has learned to read, write, and storyteller named Blackbeard. Each of these three main characters has a unique voice but when they are Telling the Story their words and pacing are almost identical much like oral traditions are passed down from one bard to the next.

The trilogy ends with a small enclave of humans and Crakers who have started to live and mate together and most of the action takes place in only the course of a few months though we have the steady flow of memories going back decades and a look into the future of maybe a year or so... that is unclear but then the need to keep track of time seems to have faded with the destruction of most of the human civilization.

The series is really build around this enclave, each previous novel guiding us toward this third trilogy suggesting that Atwood had a master plan from the start. Yet there are hints of other groups of humans out there in the world and we are left wondering if the Craker-human enclave will become dominant and usher in new human civilization or if they will be wiped out. If you can handle loose ends to your apocalyptic fiction then this trilogy may well satisfy you as it did me. If you want solid answers and definitive outlooks, skip this.

A good story, though a little slow. An enjoyable post-apocalyptic tale. Make sure you read the first two novels in the series first. There is some attempt to explain what happened in previous books, but not enough for the tale to stand alone.

This was a satisfying ending to a great series. Margaret Atwood did not pull any punches with this book. At times it is pretty brutal but then so is the world that characters are living in. I was happy that she ended the story without out any questions. The characters arcs were wrapped up and it felt complete to me.

Post apocalyptic tale, rather meandering through the story of one of the central characters, Zeb. It's a little predictable in terms of the villians vs. the good guys. I found it easier to put down than the first two books and, by this third book, I was very sick of the institutions and creatures of the final days of civilization and beyond.

A good conclusion to the series. However it wouldn't really work as a standalone novel the way both Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood could. Loved the creation of spiritualism and the importance of writing. Mixed feelings about the emphasis on Zeb. Good message about interspecies cooperation.

I just seem to love everything Atwood writes so this was no surprise that I enjoyed every bit of it. Having read the 2 books that came before helped a little, but you wouldn't have to have read them to enjoy this one

It's hard to believe Margaret Atwood wrote this novel. Characters are unrealistic, plot is shallow and story is extremely boring. I remember reading Oryx and Crake in three days, amazed by the universe she had created. I also liked The Year of the Flood. But it took me three painful months to read this novel, which gets worse each page your turn.

The shipment came speedily enough. That is to say, I was in no rush so I don't remember how long it took. Helpful info!? I KNOW, right? Anyway, the book is very, very well written and I recommend the whole series to everyone. Oryx and Crake; The Year of The Flood; Maddaddam.

An interesting look at the future of mankind and all hybrids thereof, MaddAddam is a perfect but somewhat sad end to the MaddAddam trilogy. It brings together the characters from the previous two books in a clever and plausible way. As the story drew towards its inevitable conclusion I found myself sad, but satisfied.

The Maddadam trilogy was just a random pick -and boy am I happy. Once I finished book one there was no looking back. Margaret Attwood is a top tier storyteller-the story moves right along, great dialog, character development was excellent-and the plot very relevant to our times. I'll be reading more Attwood.

Margaret Atwood becomes a victim of her own stature. The prose is in that lyrical Atwood style familiar to those who caught Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood and most others of her work. And here we come away with some disappointment.

MaddAdam continues directly where YOTF left off. So do not pick this book up unless you've re-read YOTF recently.

Ignore the "cyber-speak" that is seriously over the top and so completely laughable but this is the style Atwood has come to paint her bits of cyberspace. Much like how Gibson stylizes in Neuromancer. Admittedly, I found myself literally skipping large sections of rambling text just to get the point of all of it.

Good:
- It is an Atwood novel - so it is quality
- Well tied up plot lines (with some complaints)
- Entertaining back-story
- Telepathic blue-butt transgenic humans hung like horses
- Telepathic GMO piggies that do not like being turned into bacon
- Hilarious religion building

Bad:
- It is an Atwood novel - so it gets compared to prior novels
- Rambling prose gets worse than before
- Some loose ends are just too much of a stretch
- Not enough "screen time" for some characters
- Craker dispositions are a little tedious

::Spoilers Ahead::

Toby is revealed to be human - surprise! Possessing of very human insecurities when it comes to relationships and love. A very sharp contrast to the level headed-ness we've come to respect in YOTF but underscoring her lack of experience in that aspect of her life. That said, I would have expected Toby to be more level headed and emotionally steady given all she's been through and her age. But the inner eye we are privy to does sharply contrast with her words and actions - and this paints her as fairly mature overall. At a point, I felt that this novel failed the Bechdel test - no it doesn't but it sure feels that way at parts and internal dialogue doesn't qualify.

Shacked up with the Maddaddamites, Crakers and eventually Pigoons, she plays a central role and it is around her that the many tales are woven.

Amanda is deadened with severe PTSD. Completely understandable given what she has been through. The power balance between her and Ren shifts so clearly and "rightly". Ren is forced to "grow up" and she picks up the slack. Unfortunately, not enough is given over to her continuing story.

Snowman-the-Jimmy is comatose for the most part of the story. While he never was a very likable character, he was at least a very realistic Joe Average.

The strongest parts of this novel are those of Zeb. A mostly ancillary character for much of the prior novels, MA fills in the back story and golly the world is a really tiny space. Individuals in OR and YOTF are found to be very tightly bound with each other. And Zeb's back story is more interesting than most. Perhaps a little too incredible. But it is through his disposition that we fill in the blanks from OR and YOTF.

The weakness of this novel - besides the overly written cyber-speak and rambling prose here and there (it could have been edited tighter), is that some of the ideas just stretch towards incredulity. Firstly, genetically modifying humans to that level is literally unimaginable. We have not yet come so far as to be able to insert genes willy-nilly without knowing what really happens - in humans. Secondly, it is quite inconceivable that the world would be sufficiently depopulated of humans as to cause extinction fast enough. The Crakers will eventually encounter other groups of humans... and they are woefully unprepared for any such encounter. Thirdly, some Crakers have telepathy and are able to telepathically communicate with genetically modified pigs??? Contrasting this with the religion building taking place throughout the novel, this special power literally trumps any religious concept possible but is clearly overlooked.

A small positive is the religion building itself. Which is really hilarious.

Margaret Atwood is by far my favorite fictional writer since a I read her 'Handmaid's Tale' in high school some 20 years ago. The lady is an amazing writer in all facets, humorous, entertaining, intelligent. I had to wait some time in between the books when I was introduced to this trilogy, but new reader's no longer have to! Lucky you! You won't be able to put this trilogy down.

I consider Margaret Atwood to be the world's greatest living author: the creator of true masterpieces such as 'The Blind Assasin', 'The Robber Bride', 'Alias Grace' etc, ... and of course 'Oryx and Crake'. I found 'MaddAddam' significantly less captivating and real than the 'Year of the Flood' (which, during the past 20+ years I have come to expect from Atwood). It had too much of the key failing that made 'The Year of the Flood' a lessor novel then 'Oryx and Crake' - namely the silly naming of corporations (AnnooYou, RejoiveEsense, etc). Atwood's previous 'speculative fiction' -- her ingenious and accurate categorization of those of her works that others' wrongly label as sci-fi: 'Oryx and Crake', 'the Year of the Flood', 'The Handmaiden's Tail' and, 'The Blind Assasin'-- transcend the genre, and are simply great literature. Sadly 'MaddAddam' did not achieve her previous level of art.

I loved Oryx and Crake, it was my favorite Atwood novel since The Handmaiden's Tale, The Year of the Flood, was sos so for me. I guess I missed The Snowman and his lost love Oryx. However after devouring MaddAddam I have to reread The Year of the Flood. Atwood is a smart, funny, clever writer ( also a great story teller) who manages to poke fun at all sides of the ecological dystopian world. She is so great I wish I was CaNadian!

Wonderful book. While not necessary to have read the previous 2 books in the trilogy, it definitely helps clarify people and events.(I found myself going back to the older books to jog my memory.) Many times I found myself thinking, hmm, this could really happen. Reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale in that respect. Ms.Atwood has been one of my favorite authors for years and in my opinion this is one of her best works. This is the best book I have read in 2013.

Atwood has no equal in satirical writing. The MaddAddam trilogy will surely live for ages! I gave this 3rd book of the trilogy only 4 stars because I found "The Year of the Flood" to be more riveting. Perhaps it is unfair to compare the books. If compared to other satires, MaddAddam rates 5 stars.

This novel is incredible in its scope, style, and imagination. My favorite of the trilogy. The stories about Zen take you all throughout Atwood's carefully constructed world, and it's breathtaking. She deserves the Nobel! And extra fun for individuals with knowledge of genetics and genomics! Atwood's speculative fiction is spot on.

Very much classic Margaret Atwood. But her characters are so interesting and likeable and you want to find out what happens to them. She has a talent for writing from alternating points of view in alternating time periods.

Great finish to this trilogy. I felt that Atwood had tied up all the loose ends and left us with a sense of what might follow that we could fill in for ourselves. I re-read the first two books before starting this one so that I would be fresh on the details. I was glad that I did.

Margaret Atwood has always written slightly ahead of the curve of social (and in this series, technological) history. She must be a news junkie, a student of technology and science, and a deep thinker, but when she weaves her thoughts and worries into a story, it comes together with grace and humor, with a healthy dose of optimism. If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic literature, it doesn't get any better than this series.

I've been reading Margaret Atwood for 30 years. Love her writing and would probably read anything she wrote. The MaddAddam Trilogy was a great read. The subject matter was entirely conceivable, though I hope our world never comes to such an end. I eagerly await future Attwood novels.

Great! And amzingly upbeat and hopeful for Atwood sci fi. I couldnt put them down. I read Oryx and Crake when it came out, and then the Year of the Flood and Maddadam in a few days right after Maddadam came out. I wish there were more books in the series.

The author has a fabulous imagination. You can`t stop, must read to the end. A biofiction. The Good and the Bad, but more complicated than that. A book with several layers. At the end the reader herself/himself must continue the storytelling.

Dystopian fiction can be unsettling to read. Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy is doubly so.

You might expect any trilogy to start at Point A (in the first book), traverse Point B (in the second), and come to a climax at Point C (in the final book). Not so the MaddAddam Trilogy.

In Oryx and Crake, Book #1, we enter the future world of Atwood’s cruel vision, the late twenty-first century shortly after the Waterless Flood, which virtually exterminated the human species. The most pessimistic projections of climate change have wrought havoc on Planet Earth, and it’s not a pretty picture. Book #2, The Year of the Flood, takes us back to the years preceding the Flood, when the conditions described in Oryx and Crake came about. We learn the nature of the Flood, and how it came to be. Finally, in Book #3, MaddAddam, we encounter once again the principal characters of the first two books and follow them as the future grimly unfolds. Most of the action is compressed into a few months following the calamity of the Flood.

All three books display Atwood’s seemingly boundless creativity. Even throwaway lines often bristle with inventiveness. Her descriptions of the world after the Flood are highly detailed.

Atwood has carefully followed the dictates of classical science fiction even though she denies that her work is science fiction. (She prefers the term speculative fiction, as do many other SF writers.) As she writes in her Acknowledgments, “Although MaddAddam is a work of fiction, it does not include any technologies or biobeings that do not already exist, are not under construction, or are not possible in theory.” This assertion is sobering in view of the techno-horrors Atwood depicts in this unsettling series. So, too, is what seems to be her dark view of humanity: “hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you’ve had a little, you start shaking if you don’t get more.”

Though best known as a novelist, Margaret Atwood is also a poet, essayist, and literary critic. Her work includes dozens of novels and collections of poetry and ten nonfiction books as well as numerous other writing. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times and won it once. She is also an environmental activist and an inventor with several patents to her name.

I look forward with anticipation for every Atwood publication. This last book in the MaddAddam trilogy is no exception. Great book, good pacing. We have gotten to know the characters and Crackers come alive in this latest volume. A great view of the world gone wrong.

Margret Atwood never disappoints. The MaddAddam Trilogy was all at once engaging with great characters, imaginative connections and plot twists while taking contemporary issues through creative thought provoking story weaving.

Great ending to the trilogy. It was definitely not what I expected but books always have to end somehow. I felt like all the really important things happened in the last few chapters but leading up was kind of long. I definitely recommend rereading the first two before this one of its been a while!