The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam Trilogy)

Atwood had already pulled off the post-apocalyptic setting in Oryx and Crake without coming across as trite or far-fetched, so recounting the events leading up to The Flood from women's perspectives seemed like it should have been an effortless task for a writer of Atwood's skill. Unfortunately, all the subtleties of the first novel were not present in TYOTF and Atwood's observations on women, which are usually among the best in literature, came across as superficial.

The beauty of Oryx and Crake was the way in which Atwood meticulously showed the gradual numbing and dehumanization of Crake and Snowman. Atwood's depiction of the desensitization to sex and violence, and the resultant atrophy of instinctual human emotion, was more than just a polemic against corporations. It was also a profoundly accurate observation about the slow death suffered by two close friends at the hands of their own unchecked evolutionary drives. TYOTF, however, was lacking in any of these observations and instead proceeded to take endless pot shots at corporations by way of limp science fiction writing. In addition to the endless drone of the nefarious corporation mantra was the poorly executed characterization of the God's Gardeners, the cult-like group of self-sustaining vegans who tend lush gardens amidst static cityscapes. I was never sure whether these people were supposed to be intended as comic relief or a serious opposition to Evil Corporations. Adam One, the leader of the Gardeners, delivers sermons centered on various Environmentalist Saints and follows with hymns that read like bad poetry. This careless depiction is unusual for Atwood, especially considering that these were apparently the folks the reader was intended to admire.

Atwood's take on women was odd in that she seemingly had nothing more to say than "women in the End of Days will be reduced to nothing short of sex objects subject to ownership by the most violent and ruthless." I don't mean to come across as callous, but this observation has been made in virtually every post-apocalyptic movie and novel ever written. Atwood's observations on the female condition were deeply insightful and moving in Surfacing and the Blind Assassin from a purely aesthetic perspective. They involved identity, perception, and objectification. If the goal of the writer is to give insight into the human condition, Atwood is certainly capable of achieving this goal, so how is it she had nothing more to say than what nearly all readers can imagine on their own?

While Oryx and Crake was a masterful novel, its follow-up did nothing more than fill out the ranks of cheap science-fiction pulp. It's the sign of a misstep for a writer of Atwood's ability to churn out four hundred pages of insights the reader is capable of making without the assistance of a novel. If her intentions were political, then TYOTF has illuminated Atwood's politics more than the human condition. In this sense, Atwood might not have missed the target so much as she was aiming at a different one altogether.

What was great was I had burned, browned a page accidentally. The automatic library cost was $20.00 I saved maybe $8.00 by ordering the book, new, through the store and the library accepted strangely cut pages on the new book. Reading the book I was miffed at the put down of people who choose to eat only a restricted diet they deem humane.

This book reminded me of when you watch a miniseries and the first and last few episodes are super engaging and have you on the edge while the middle episodes drag along and are just a slow setup for those end episodes you love so much. This book was the middle episodes. Necessary for what I'm hoping will be a great last book.

Its not a bad book. It is still well written and I like the characters. In fact, I like these characters better than in the first book. As a stand alone story this book is very good. As part of a trilogy, it felt a bit Iike a rehash. The idea of running parallel stories and showing how they converge was a cool one. However, there wasn't enough new info to propel the story forward. It was pretty obvious in the first book that there would be other people alive although its hard for me to believe all the characters that did make it! I will hold my final judgement until I am done with the last book.

After finishing the first book in a series, I was so excited to receive and start the second book. What I received was a crap bargain bin romance novel instead with a $1 sticker on the front, so my first instinct is that I got scammed. I am returning the offending book and getting a refund...sad faces and disappointment abound.

Book 2 of the MaddAddam series.

After Oryx and Crake, we expect the series to follow Jimmy/Snowman, but it doesn't. We start with Toby and Ren, two women who used to be a part of the God's Gardeners cult. We watch them survive the Waterless Flood, the plague Crake set upon humanity. We see the events that lead up the Waterless Flood as told by Toby and Ren, including how they know some of the characters we've already met.

In true Atwood fashion, we're jerked from the present to the past and back again. How does the God's Gardeners cult relate to Crake? How do our heroines fit into the part of the story we already know? And how does this cult predict what's coming?

The answers are murky at best, but through the “scripture” and hymns of Adam One and the God's Gardeners we see how they perceive the world around them, a world that is so close to ours. Reading Oryx and Crake, I thought Atwood's future was crazy, but once I see it through someone else's eyes I see it's already happening. It's on it's way.

So you have two questions to answer: Will you read MaddAddam, the final book in the trilogy? Will you realize that it's coming, that the Waterless Flood will overtake all of us before we can fight it?

While this story is most certainly intertwined with Atwood’s previous work, ‘ Oryx and Crake,’ and indeed there are some overlapping characters, a person does not have to read the first book in order to enjoy and appreciate the second – each can and probably should be read as a stand-alone offering.

Atwood gives us a goodly look into the world of speculative fiction and is suppose to exercise the reader’s imagination and ability to ask the question “what if?” This is the story of a dystopian ( I know, lots of folks, myself included, dislike this descriptive and overly used word, but I don’t know a better one to use in this case) civilization teetering on the edge of complete self destruction and is presented in a very literary fashion. One reviewer has described this work as “a beautiful tale of an ugly story.” I must admit that I agree with this short assessment of the story. I will say that the main characters and the narrators of the story, Toby and Ren, in my opinion, are not the most likeable fictional characters I have ever run across...I never did warm up to them. This is actually not bad though and on a certain level made the work and the world the author built a bit more interesting.

Keep in mind that this is speculative fiction so if you are the type of person who likes to read hidden agendas into works, then this one will probably upset you. The world is going to hell in a hand basket; corrupt government, corrupt corporations, strange religious cults...yup, it is all there. Just keep the word “FICTION” in mind and you should be okay.

Life is hard in the world Atwood has created and there are some rather disturbing scenes and episodes on the pages of this one; the word brutal came to my mind more than once while reading this thing. On the other hand, if you take a brief look at human history, you will find just as much disturbing and just as much brutality in the real world as this fictional one.

This work is very well written but I will be the first to admit that it is not for everyone. Everyone who reads it will take something different away and this is the mark of a well written tale as far as I am concerned. Both my wife and I read this one and while I am giving this one five stars, my wife would give it three if she were to review it...just difference in people, you know.

This was a library find.

Despite the fact that this is listed as a sequel to Oryx and Crake, it's actually more of a parallel story that fills in the gaps and fleshes out the world of O&C. Instead of following Jimmy and Crake in their privileged world of the Compounds, this story follows a group of hippies in the poorer sections of the area who are devoted to a religion based in preparing for an environmental apocalypse and being complete vegetarians.

I enjoyed the two main characters in this story much more than Jimmy in the first book, mostly due to the fact that they were more likable and relatable. In the beginning I enjoyed reading the sermons and songs the God's Gardeners used in their worship, but by the end I found myself skimming them for important plot details instead of fascination with their faith. I read this book directly following Oryx and Crake and it really made the experience worthwhile because there are so many little details of how the two stories intersect that I would have easily missed if I had read them farther apart. The way Atwood seamlessly brings the stories and characters together kept me turning the pages, despite the fact that most of the suspense element was removed due to the parallel nature of the series.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the story all ties up in the third book now that the two threads of plot have come together. Honestly, after the events of the first two books I feel like anything can happen.

This book is a follow-on to author Margaret Atwood's award-winning "Oryx and Crake" and is very good, though not quite up to the first novel. It is about survival in a dystopian world after a worldwide super-plague wipes out almost everyone. The story's timeline switches back and forth before, during, and after the plague, following two women who manage to survive the plague. This is a dark but intriguing portrait of mankind and the world in general. Atwood creats interesting characters, keeps the story moving at a good pace, and the prose is very good.
The keys for me are two - did I enjoy it and do I want to continue reading the final book of this trilogy ("Maddaddam"). The answer is yes and I recommend this book and Margaret Atwood's writing in general.

'The Year of the Flood' is an interesting follow-up to 'Oryx and Crake'. The author moves further into the notion mankind destroys the world because of stuff like bio-engineering. We are exposed to this world through the eyes of cult members who shun the outside elements of modern man and from those who harm animals. For much of the book the narrative is about this cult and, well, I didn't find it to be all that interesting. But eventually the pace quickens as the outside world intrudes into their space, and the ending is quite satisfying (complete with a cliffhanger to take us into the final book of the series). Oh, I should add that before most chapters the author has inserted poems (songs) that reflect the spirit of the cult. These poems are awesome; I had forgotten Margaret Atwood has had many books of poetry published during her long career. The final poem in the book is absolutely tremendous.

Bottom line: a somewhat struggling read that sorts itself out and compels the reader to think deep thoughts. Recommended.

It sounded such a great plot, utterly intriguing. I couldn't wait to start reading. But the writing wandered from 1st person to 3rd person, present tense to past tense, it wandered around in time, and even explored a bit of a very boring made-up religion.
The book was a Christmas present, so I felt I should read it all. I battled on. But when I realised that I was losing track of who was who, and what's more, I didn't care, I gave up. I read a bit more than half.
The author has won all sorts of prizes. The author is well known. I dare say she can cope with a bit of criticism. There were points of interest, even parts where I read quite eagerly, but then suddenly it would be a new character, a new time, even a bit of poetry.
For the most part, I simply found the book tedious.

After slogging through 80% of this book -- including a week-long break during which I read 3 other (really good) books -- I decided not to waste any more of my time. I decided I just don't like Margaret Atwood's writing. You might love this popular book, but post-apocalyptic, parallel universe stuff is not my cup of tea. Years ago, I read and enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale, and in ways this is similar: humans living in a whole different way. This is more of the same.

I found the punny inventions annoying and precious, e.g., AnooYoo Spa, CorpSeCorps for the "army" run by the corporations running the world, et cetera. It's very well-written and well-edited, but I just didn't like it. If you are a major Atwood fan, you will likely love this second book of a trilogy, as well as the other two.

"What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question."

The Year of the Flood is a companion novel to Oryx and Crake (however O&C fills in much of the necessary back story so make sure not to skip it).The discussion (or argument) continues with The Year of the Flood regarding the ability to alter humans in order to achieve perfection and whether it's an ability that should be used. This time, we get to see the world through the eyes of Gods Gardner's (and also those of whom live in the pleeblands). The God's Gardner's are an extremely eco-conscious group of people that have been prophesying for years of the `Waterless Flood' that is impending. Because these people have anticipated this event for so long they're more prepared than anyone else, or at least the ones that survived the initial pandemic are. This group of people has created their own ideology which melds science and nature into the fabric of religion and was really quite fascinating. The most fascinating aspect of Oryx and Crake was learning about the pandemic and how it came to be but with The Year of the Flood it was the focus on this extremely adaptive group and how they managed to survive in a world where no one else could.

The highly creative world Atwood has created is not without flaws. It is imperfect and blemished, however for me that was what appealed the most. I expect if we ever find ourselves in a dystopian/post-apocalyptic world it would be much the same lacking a perfectly wrapped up ending. Atwood has been clear to designate this trilogy as "speculative fiction" and not "science fiction". Science fiction tends to be so outlandish that its very unlikely it will ever occur whereas speculative fiction may be outlandish at first glance yet its still dreadfully possible. That's exactly what these stories exude: the actual possibility of these events transpiring. It's what makes these books fantastic yet so terribly frightening.

If this book had not followed the marvelous "Oryx and Crake", I don’t think I would have continued reading after the first 30-50 pages. I did so only out of loyalty to the trilogy and Atwood’s wonderful inventiveness in creating this dystopian speculation on humanity. The world she created is a cautionary tale of how grim things could become, with ruling elites and “the pleeblands”, the ordinary people on which companies experimented and how brutally people would treat each other. There is plenty of evidence some of these things are happening now.

Atwood writes well; she established her characters well. But, she took far too much time establishing the premises of God’s Gardeners as a secretly subversive quasi-religious group which had predicted the waterless flood and prepared its people to survive it. The reader senses, but does not know how the Gardeners were involved in the creation of the “flood” that killed 99% of humanity. (If the reader has read the first volume, we know who created it, but not exactly the motivations.) And, much of this book was backstory for "Oryx and Crake," with only the last one-third really devoted to the “flood” and its aftermath.

I found her creation of this religious cult fascinating, meeting the needs of the brutal times. But, nearly every section began with a sermon and hymn by Adam One. I’m sure to Margaret Atwood those sermons and hymns contributed to the plot, but I found myself skipping them in order to find out what happened next. I am a practicing Christian and I smiled to myself at how realistically she conveyed the what it takes to keep a religious organization together. Atwood seems to have good-humored respect for the Protestant world in which she grew up.

I will also give her kudos on the ending that sets up the reader to want to know what happen to Jimmy-the-Snowman, the gentle Crakers, and the surviving Gardeners. They are far from out of the woods, but their preparation for survival is allowing them to make a way for themselves. There are some questions I hope she will answer. The Crakers were supposed to be an improvement on humanity. Are they? Can those who are left build something better given the dim view of humanity built into this and other of her novels?

Although her scientific speculation is good, she seems to give humanity little room for a soul. I just wish she had demonstrated more restrain in the Gardener creed we were subjected to over and over again, like listening to self-evident sermons.

I know that sounds bad, but her dystopian visions are so profoundly disturbing, I find they influence my thinking forever after. Say what you will--her nightmares are not easy to dismiss!

Readers of 2003's Oryx and Crake will recognize the world of The Year of the Flood. Neither a prequel nor a sequel, the latter is more of a companion novel. It's set in the same world, covering roughly the same time span. Whereas Oryx and Crake was a post-apocalyptic narrative told from Jimmy's point of view, here the narrators are Toby and Ren. Jimmy, Oryx, and Crake make appearances in this novel, and readers of both books will discovered minor characters from the former novel are major characters in the latter. In short, the two are intertwined, but may be read in any order. It is not necessary to have read Oryx and Crake first, though ultimately reading them both is an immensely satisfying experience, shedding light on many aspects of the story being told.

Now to the story...Toby and Ren have both spent significant portions of their lives involved with a fringe religious group called God's Gardeners. Ren was brought to the ascetic group as a child by her mother. Toby found her way there out of desperation in adulthood. Each has professed disbelief in the tenets of the religion, but the pacifistic and environmental teachings have become deeply ingrained in both. At the opening of the novel, it is Year Twenty-Five in the God's Gardeners' calendar; the Year of the Waterless Flood.

From the beginning, the group's prophet-like leader had preached that a "waterless flood" was coming to wipe out humanity. In addition to their dogmatic environmentalism, the group believed in preparing for this flood with survival skills and food caches called "Ararats." The predicted day has come in the form of a global pandemic. Society has broken down completely. From their respective places of isolation, each woman wonders if she may be the last human left and struggles to survive in this altered world.

As everyone knows, there's nothing like apocalypse to make a person introspective. As each woman reflects upon the ups and downs of her life with the Gardeners and beyond, the reader gradually gleans a fuller picture of the world these women lived in, their individual and joint histories, what led to cataclysm, and what has ultimately happened to the world.

As one might expect from Atwood, The Year of the Flood is a beautiful telling of an ugly story. And what a story it is! In addition to being very much a novel of ideas, it is an utterly un-put-downable page-turner! It's a quick read, with short chapters and lots of white space on the pages. The novel flies by. The ending is satisfying and unsatisfying at once. It sheds some light on Oryx and Crake's enigmatic conclusion and completes this arc of the story, but leaves this reader very much hoping for a final volume of this rumored trilogy.

This book is a follow-on to author Margaret Atwood's award-winning "Oryx and Crake" and is very good, though not quite up to the first novel. It is about survival in a dystopian world after a worldwide super-plague wipes out almost everyone. The story's timeline switches back and forth before, during, and after the plague, following two women who manage to survive the plague. This is a dark but intriguing portrait of mankind and the world in general. Atwood creats interesting characters, keeps the story moving at a good pace, and the prose is very good.
The keys for me are two - did I enjoy it and do I want to continue reading the final book of this trilogy ("Maddaddam"). The answer is yes and I recommend this book and Margaret Atwood's writing in general.

'The Year of the Flood' is an interesting follow-up to 'Oryx and Crake'. The author moves further into the notion mankind destroys the world because of stuff like bio-engineering. We are exposed to this world through the eyes of cult members who shun the outside elements of modern man and from those who harm animals. For much of the book the narrative is about this cult and, well, I didn't find it to be all that interesting. But eventually the pace quickens as the outside world intrudes into their space, and the ending is quite satisfying (complete with a cliffhanger to take us into the final book of the series). Oh, I should add that before most chapters the author has inserted poems (songs) that reflect the spirit of the cult. These poems are awesome; I had forgotten Margaret Atwood has had many books of poetry published during her long career. The final poem in the book is absolutely tremendous.

Bottom line: a somewhat struggling read that sorts itself out and compels the reader to think deep thoughts. Recommended.

It sounded such a great plot, utterly intriguing. I couldn't wait to start reading. But the writing wandered from 1st person to 3rd person, present tense to past tense, it wandered around in time, and even explored a bit of a very boring made-up religion.
The book was a Christmas present, so I felt I should read it all. I battled on. But when I realised that I was losing track of who was who, and what's more, I didn't care, I gave up. I read a bit more than half.
The author has won all sorts of prizes. The author is well known. I dare say she can cope with a bit of criticism. There were points of interest, even parts where I read quite eagerly, but then suddenly it would be a new character, a new time, even a bit of poetry.
For the most part, I simply found the book tedious.

After slogging through 80% of this book -- including a week-long break during which I read 3 other (really good) books -- I decided not to waste any more of my time. I decided I just don't like Margaret Atwood's writing. You might love this popular book, but post-apocalyptic, parallel universe stuff is not my cup of tea. Years ago, I read and enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale, and in ways this is similar: humans living in a whole different way. This is more of the same.

I found the punny inventions annoying and precious, e.g., AnooYoo Spa, CorpSeCorps for the "army" run by the corporations running the world, et cetera. It's very well-written and well-edited, but I just didn't like it. If you are a major Atwood fan, you will likely love this second book of a trilogy, as well as the other two.

"What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question."

The Year of the Flood is a companion novel to Oryx and Crake (however O&C fills in much of the necessary back story so make sure not to skip it).The discussion (or argument) continues with The Year of the Flood regarding the ability to alter humans in order to achieve perfection and whether it's an ability that should be used. This time, we get to see the world through the eyes of Gods Gardner's (and also those of whom live in the pleeblands). The God's Gardner's are an extremely eco-conscious group of people that have been prophesying for years of the `Waterless Flood' that is impending. Because these people have anticipated this event for so long they're more prepared than anyone else, or at least the ones that survived the initial pandemic are. This group of people has created their own ideology which melds science and nature into the fabric of religion and was really quite fascinating. The most fascinating aspect of Oryx and Crake was learning about the pandemic and how it came to be but with The Year of the Flood it was the focus on this extremely adaptive group and how they managed to survive in a world where no one else could.

The highly creative world Atwood has created is not without flaws. It is imperfect and blemished, however for me that was what appealed the most. I expect if we ever find ourselves in a dystopian/post-apocalyptic world it would be much the same lacking a perfectly wrapped up ending. Atwood has been clear to designate this trilogy as "speculative fiction" and not "science fiction". Science fiction tends to be so outlandish that its very unlikely it will ever occur whereas speculative fiction may be outlandish at first glance yet its still dreadfully possible. That's exactly what these stories exude: the actual possibility of these events transpiring. It's what makes these books fantastic yet so terribly frightening.

If this book had not followed the marvelous "Oryx and Crake", I don’t think I would have continued reading after the first 30-50 pages. I did so only out of loyalty to the trilogy and Atwood’s wonderful inventiveness in creating this dystopian speculation on humanity. The world she created is a cautionary tale of how grim things could become, with ruling elites and “the pleeblands”, the ordinary people on which companies experimented and how brutally people would treat each other. There is plenty of evidence some of these things are happening now.

Atwood writes well; she established her characters well. But, she took far too much time establishing the premises of God’s Gardeners as a secretly subversive quasi-religious group which had predicted the waterless flood and prepared its people to survive it. The reader senses, but does not know how the Gardeners were involved in the creation of the “flood” that killed 99% of humanity. (If the reader has read the first volume, we know who created it, but not exactly the motivations.) And, much of this book was backstory for "Oryx and Crake," with only the last one-third really devoted to the “flood” and its aftermath.

I found her creation of this religious cult fascinating, meeting the needs of the brutal times. But, nearly every section began with a sermon and hymn by Adam One. I’m sure to Margaret Atwood those sermons and hymns contributed to the plot, but I found myself skipping them in order to find out what happened next. I am a practicing Christian and I smiled to myself at how realistically she conveyed the what it takes to keep a religious organization together. Atwood seems to have good-humored respect for the Protestant world in which she grew up.

I will also give her kudos on the ending that sets up the reader to want to know what happen to Jimmy-the-Snowman, the gentle Crakers, and the surviving Gardeners. They are far from out of the woods, but their preparation for survival is allowing them to make a way for themselves. There are some questions I hope she will answer. The Crakers were supposed to be an improvement on humanity. Are they? Can those who are left build something better given the dim view of humanity built into this and other of her novels?

Although her scientific speculation is good, she seems to give humanity little room for a soul. I just wish she had demonstrated more restrain in the Gardener creed we were subjected to over and over again, like listening to self-evident sermons.

I know that sounds bad, but her dystopian visions are so profoundly disturbing, I find they influence my thinking forever after. Say what you will--her nightmares are not easy to dismiss!

Readers of 2003's Oryx and Crake will recognize the world of The Year of the Flood. Neither a prequel nor a sequel, the latter is more of a companion novel. It's set in the same world, covering roughly the same time span. Whereas Oryx and Crake was a post-apocalyptic narrative told from Jimmy's point of view, here the narrators are Toby and Ren. Jimmy, Oryx, and Crake make appearances in this novel, and readers of both books will discovered minor characters from the former novel are major characters in the latter. In short, the two are intertwined, but may be read in any order. It is not necessary to have read Oryx and Crake first, though ultimately reading them both is an immensely satisfying experience, shedding light on many aspects of the story being told.

Now to the story...Toby and Ren have both spent significant portions of their lives involved with a fringe religious group called God's Gardeners. Ren was brought to the ascetic group as a child by her mother. Toby found her way there out of desperation in adulthood. Each has professed disbelief in the tenets of the religion, but the pacifistic and environmental teachings have become deeply ingrained in both. At the opening of the novel, it is Year Twenty-Five in the God's Gardeners' calendar; the Year of the Waterless Flood.

From the beginning, the group's prophet-like leader had preached that a "waterless flood" was coming to wipe out humanity. In addition to their dogmatic environmentalism, the group believed in preparing for this flood with survival skills and food caches called "Ararats." The predicted day has come in the form of a global pandemic. Society has broken down completely. From their respective places of isolation, each woman wonders if she may be the last human left and struggles to survive in this altered world.

As everyone knows, there's nothing like apocalypse to make a person introspective. As each woman reflects upon the ups and downs of her life with the Gardeners and beyond, the reader gradually gleans a fuller picture of the world these women lived in, their individual and joint histories, what led to cataclysm, and what has ultimately happened to the world.

As one might expect from Atwood, The Year of the Flood is a beautiful telling of an ugly story. And what a story it is! In addition to being very much a novel of ideas, it is an utterly un-put-downable page-turner! It's a quick read, with short chapters and lots of white space on the pages. The novel flies by. The ending is satisfying and unsatisfying at once. It sheds some light on Oryx and Crake's enigmatic conclusion and completes this arc of the story, but leaves this reader very much hoping for a final volume of this rumored trilogy.

The Year of the Flood, the second book in the MaddAddam trilogy, came out 6 years after Oryx and Crake in 2009. It is not a sequel, but rather a companion to the first novel as it takes place on a concurrent time. Toby and Ren survived the epidemic that killed most of the human race. A series of flashbacks informs us that Toby was a therapist in a spa and Ren an exotic dancer in a nightclub. Even though the two women are very different, they have something in common: they were once members of the God’s Gardeners, a group of pacific, religious and ecological people who knew that the Waterless Flood was coming. The book follows Toby and Ren’s separate stories of survival both before and after the epidemic.

The Year of the Flood is more interesting and more engrossing than Oryx and Crake in large part thanks to the two main characters, Toby and Ren. They have more depth and are more likable than Jimmy, the crazy, self-destructive narrator of the first book in the MaddAddam trilogy. In addition, it’s fun to see other characters present in Oryx and Crake pop up from time to time. However, I found the discourses of the God’s Gardeners’ leader, Adam One, to be long and cumbersome at times, even though I understand that they were used to give the reader more insight about the cult. In the whole, this book was excellent, and I am looking forward to reading MaddAddam for the conclusion of the trilogy.

Please go to my blog, Cecile Sune - Bookobsessed, if you would like to read more reviews or discover fun facts about books and authors.

The second book in the Madd Addam series, The Year of the Flood follow Atwood's first book in this series Oryx and Crake, although it's not necessary to have read that book first as this one only contains a few brief references to the former. The book follows a religious sect called "God's Gardeners" and their preparation for the waterless flood. While the book follows the stories of several characters the two main characters to note are Toby, an older woman who joins the gardeners to get protection from a vicious boyfriend, and Ren who came to the group as a child and ends up working as a trapeze dancer at the high end Sex Mart club Scales and Tails.

The multiple perspectives in this book make it a little hard to navigate at times and in addition to the multiple narrations the plot also skips from past to present, which adds another layer to unravel when trying to figure out who's who and what's going on. Once you get into sync with the rhythm of the narration, however, the book will start to draw you in and the initially confusing characters will become complex and interesting.

The book does move a little slow and it seems as though most of the action happens in the last few chapters. Atwood spends the majority of the book creating the world of the gardeners exploring the events that lead to the plague and how far the world has fallen. The end of the book briefly introduces the "new world" of perfect, genetically engineered, humans and leaves you anticipating book 3 in the series. Don't pick up this book if you're looking for a fast paced plot, but there's plenty of intrigue and twists to keep you entertained as long as you're willing to look past some of the slower sections.

Although I am reading this trilogy back to back, I had some trouble with the start of this one. The back and forth from present to past and back with so many characters to follow was disconcerting. I continued and soon these issues were resolved. I became completely emersed in that same back and forth, thus gaining much needed information I would require to understand the climatic implications. I am completely blown away by Atwood's creativity which spellbounds the reader.

A good novel dealing with a theme of dystopia should have elements of truth that make what the reader is experiencing in the pages something that is not that far out of reach. Forget about the exaggerations and complicated science that the common reader won't understand - instead, speak to something that they know. Incorporate hymns, familiar passages of religious text, and expand on the desires of people who are living in the real world, here and now.

Then twist it all into something so scary it shocks that same reader into thinking, "Oh my ... this COULD happen."

That's good dystopia. And Margaret Atwood captures all of that perfectly in The Year of the Flood, a follow-up companion novel to her brilliant Oryx and Crake. Switching gear from Snowman-Jimmy and the Crakers, Atwood moves to study the lives of God's Gardeners, a cultish group of people who are clinging to the organic, natural way of life.

I really struggled at times with this book because I felt as if the God's Gardeners should be people I should be afraid of - a cult that twists and perverts religion much like those portrayed in the news today. But yet, I could not disagree with their fundamental beliefs because I hated what was happening in the world around them and its similarities to our world today. And that inner struggle as I read is what made me love this book so much. I had to think about what it was I disliked, what made me uncomfortable, and what exactly I agreed with and then pinpoint where things went wrong in the book and where they went right.

And that, folks, is why Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. I love reading a book that makes me work and, when I finish, leaves me mentally exhausted.

The conclusion to this trilogy is due out soon, so I re-read Oryx and Crake and read The Year of the Flood for the first time in preparation for the release of MaddAddam. You can bet I am looking forward to the conclusion and dreading it at the same time because what else could I look forward to with as much eager anticipation and dread!

The Year of the Flood begins after the plague from Oryx and Crake has killed off most of humanity. Two seemingly-different women have somehow survived; one, Toby, has barricaded herself inside a luxurious spa while exotic dancer Ren was fortunate to have been in quarantine at the time. Both women, however, share a common history as members of a religious group known as God's Gardeners, who warned of a "waterless flood" that would wipe out humanity.

Most of the story focuses on Ren's and Toby's pasts in the Gardeners, a group briefly mentioned in Oryx and Crake. Atwood includes a sermon from the group's leader at the beginning of each section, revealing the core tenets of the group, which seeks to reconcile Biblical tradition with modern biology. The Gardeners try to live an eco-friendly lifestyle, a contrast to the exaggerated commercialism surrounding them.

Year of the Flood also shows more of the "pleeblands" mentioned in Oryx and Crake, showing a world in which global warming has gotten out of control, and in which there is no corporate and environmental regulation whatsoever. The messages seem a bit heavy handed and absurd at times, but there is still a good story here.

The novel alternates between Toby's point of view, and Ren's, who tells her story in the third person. Both Ren and Toby's stories intersect with each other, until the two are reunited near the end. The final portions after the plague feel a bit rushed, with the surviving characters finding one another a bit too quickly.

Many questions from the previous book are answered, including the origins of the "Extinctathon" game, and the identity of the people Jimmy encounters at the end of Oryx. New questions are raised as well however, such as Crake's involvement with the Gardeners. Year of the Flood crosses over with Oryx and Crake in multiple places, although the novel can stand alone. This is still a great read, although the ending seems a bit abrupt; reading Oryx and Crake as well is recommended for a more complete story.

In The Year of the Flood, author Margaret Atwood takes her readers back into the dystopian world of Oryx and Crake. A world ruled by corporations, a world more of death than of life, a world on the precipice of exhaustion. Atwood projects forward our penchant for mass consumption, our obsessions with youth and beauty, our growing disconnect with the planet that sustains us, and shows the reader our potential end. A world of suffering and inequality and greed.

In Oryx and Crake, which I read many years ago and do not remember well (not due to any fault in the novel itself, but with my own poor memory) Atwood focuses on two young men, Jimmy and Glenn, growing up within the relatively safe haven of corporate compounds. In The Year of the Flood, Atwood takes us outside these walls, to show us the inherent inequality and crumbling nature of society. We follow two different women, Ren and Toby, both members of the Green cult called the Gardeners, in the years before what their leader, Adam One, calls the waterless flood. These two women are very different from vastly different backgrounds with many years separating them. To further heighten their difference, Atwood uses alternating points of view to tell their stories. Ren's chapters are told in first person whereas Toby's are told in third.

Atwood also includes sermons and hymns from the leader of the Gardeners, Adam One. Adam, a former scientist, tries to educate his flock about how to live as stewards of the planet, in harmony with nature. In someways, he resembles a Dooms Day prepper, teaching survival skills for the day when the ecosystem wreaks its revenge.

Though less compelling than the first book in her MaddAddam trilogy, and perhaps only because her vision struck me as so unique and plausible in Oryx and Crake, Atwood still manages to create serious momentum. For me, though I cared much less about the characters in this novel than the last. They seem more like vehicles for a message than real people-especially Ren who's voice doesn't grow with her as she leaves childhood to become a woman.
Still, the questions raised by Atwood throughout her story, questions about the viability of our way of life, need to be asked, and answers must be found. The tale created for me not so much concern for Ren and Toby, but concern for us, the human race.

In the end, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good dystopian yarn, Margaret Atwood, and/or thoughtful prose. You'll come away with a lot of questions to which we need to find answers. Though Atwood's twisted future resembles an extremely decayed version of our own world in its death throws, still, it is still clearly our own. And it is haunting.

In The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood returns the world she developed in Oryx and Crake. This isn't really a sequel, but a parallel story that dovetails with the earlier novel. This story revolves around members of the "God's Gardeners," a religious group that blends eco-consciousness with a variation on Biblical Christianity. (It's much more of the former; it would not be considered Christian by most Christian denominations of today.) As they separate themselves from the world at large, God's Gardeners anticipate a "waterless flood" that will decimate the human race. Readers of Oryx and Crake will, of course, recognize that this decimation is coming, not as a judgment from God, but as an expression of Crake's hubris.

We do get glimpses of the Snowman and the children of Crake, who played a large role in the first novel. As Atwood develops this future history, she comments insightfully on cultural and scientific developments in our world. Her view of the future of the human race is pretty bleak, but realistic enough to give pause.

Readers who appreciated Oryx and Crake will especially enjoy The Year of the Flood and will be eager to revisit this alternate future in her newest book, Maddaddam. Enjoy!

"You can't live with such fears and keep on whistling. The waiting builds up in you like a tide. You start wanting it to be done with. You find yourself saying to the sky, Just do it. Do your worst. Get it over with. She could feel the coming tremor of it running through her spine, asleep or awake...."

Well. Year of the Flood. If one-quarter of the horrible things that happened in this book were to occur in the world, I would hate to still be around. A dystopia as bleak as The Road. Almost as bleak as The Road. The Road is bleak.

Let's see if I can reveal a little about the plot. The creatures of the earth are changing rapidly. A corporation is using biotechnology to merge species for their own purposes and to inflict disease on those it doesn't like. At the same time, a cult has developed that holds the creatures of the earth as sacred.

The story is told from the points of view of Ren and Toby, two young women, in alternating chapters. Other important characters are Ren's friend, Amanda; Zeb, Ren's stepfather; Jimmy, Ren's boyfriend; the Painballers, a group who seem almost without human feeling after being punished in subhuman ways; and Adam One, the leader of the cult, the Gardeners.

The story shifts from year five to year ten and on up, to year twenty-five, the year of the flood. A natural disaster ("the waterless flood") occurs in year twenty-five and most of humanity is destroyed.

Every page made me think, about human life, about relationships, about ecology, about kindness and cruelty. A very thoughtful, if scary book.

I looked forward to this after reading "Oryx and Crake" but based on an initial review of the novel's dust jacket, I was a little reluctant. The protagonists are "a young trapeze dancer locked inside a high end sex club" and a "God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxury spa where many of the treatments are edible." This did not sound promising. Yet Atwood's a fine writer, so I went ahead anyway, and don't regret it. This is a very good book.

While it takes place in the same world as "Oryx and Crake", this is quite a different novel. Unlike the previous book where the story was told from the point of view of just one unlikable protagonist, "The Year of the Flood" benefits from two points of view. The main characters are much more appealing which lends a warmth to the book that the previous novel lacked. Atwood draws two likeable and realistic characters in what is an increasingly bizarre world. Also, while "Oryx and Crake" was occasionally laugh out loud funny, this book is much less so. Most of the wit in this book comes from the homilies from the religious group's leader who in his sermons often abruptly juxtaposes environmental philosophy with common sense advice. Fans of dystopias and end of the world novels will love this, as the characters must try to survive as best they can in their broken world and then must attempt to ride out the "Year of the Flood."

The novel isn't perfect. As others have pointed out, there's far too many coincidences for comfort. Also, I'm afraid I didn't get the point of the Gardeners' hymns. At first I thought Atwood was parodying the environmental movement, but the hymns are quite serious, as she makes clear in the acknowledgements. As a standalone novel I think this is four stars, but collectively with the previous novel, which should be read before this one, it rates a solid five stars. This series is destined to become a classic.

I was deeply impressed with how engaging and interesting “The Year of the Flood” this book was from the very first chapter. And it’s not just because the characters of Toby and Ren are round and well developed (not going to lie, I was much more invested in Ren’s story line than Toby’s), but also because Atwood writes such insightful and intriguing lines so fluidly. One thing in particular that struck me was the idea of writing being a dangerous action. According to the Gardeners, writings can be easily used by enemies to bring harm to yourself, an idea so different from what I’ve been taught all my life: Writings preserve knowledge and foster the development of communities and cultures, creating better futures. Writing has always been taught as a positive thing, but here it’s described as permanent in a negative way because it allows everybody to share knowledge that should only be possessed by few. This is just one excerpt that made me stop reading and think (I’m not much of a reader, so I don’t ponder over books very often).
Another part that impressed me was the depiction of Ren as a young child, it’s so accurate of children everywhere. She’s immersed in an environment which she had no real option to be in and there are many restrictions and rules which must be followed. Children don’t like rules, this is a common fact, which makes her encounter with Amanda so intriguing. She meets this flashy, knowledgeable Pleebrat, a member of the real world, full of danger and excitement. Her deep desire to impress this new character is completely understandable, and I’m not surprised that she even denies being part of the Gardeners when she’s questioned about it. People in general, but children especially, wish to gain acceptance and approval from their peers because they believe it will bring about connections and relationships with others, which is exactly what happened between Amanda and Ren. It’s also a very middle school situation that Amanda and Ren spread this rumor about Burt which gets wildly out of control and escalates very quickly. Atwood does such a wonderful job of depicting childhood habits and showing that despite the occurrences of this time period, these characters are still just kids.

I love Atwood, and Oryx and Crake was truly brilliant...but this sequel is not on par with its predecessor.

The story revolves around Ren and Toby, two survivors of a disaster that wipes out most of humanity. However, most of the book is back story and goes back and forth between their respective pre-disaster stories. However, the two characters weren't differentiated enough, so at first I was having a hard time remembering what happened to who. The book as a whole, while it does have Atwood's usual flawless prose, is unfortunately not very engaging, and has little forward momentum. The sermons and hymns of the God's Gardeners that are interspersed throughout the book are a chore to get through and didn't add much to the story.

I am about halfway through the book and I doubt I will finish. Nothing much has happened so far and I don't feel motivated to continue. I really wanted to love this book, so it's disappointing.

This is the fifth book of Atwood's I have read, and Lady Oracle, Handmaid's Tale, and Oryx and Crake were all brilliant, among my favorite novels of all time. This book shares some of the traits of Bodily Harm, which I did not like, including unlikeable/indifferent protagonists, too much back story, and not enough narrative drive.

Looking forward to reading Atwood's other books as she is a wonderful writer. But for me this one is a misfire.

Intricately imagined. Not as compelling a storyline as its predecessor, Oryx and Crake, this book in the MaddAddam Trilogy is a little slow to develop. This is largely because of the rich and utterly convincing portrayal of several members of God's Gardeners. These are not cranks, or single-minded zealots - these are real humans, with a convincing theology, but with a practical response to the challenges leading up to the Waterless Flood that is ultimately flawed. Readers looking for a rollicking adventure will be sorely disappointed. But those looking for a sophisticated and detailed portrait of a quite plausible future should hang in there - it's worth the time.

Profoundly brilliant. Had I not read this directly after readingOryx and Crake, I would have missed so many things - little nuisances, passing comments made by the characters... it just enriched the earlier story and brought so much depth, context, and elegance. Like looking at the Rubin's vase optical illusion and only seeing it one way for so long, and then someone points out the other image right before your eyes. Of course, it was Ms. Atwood herself who constructed the image and slowly sheds light on it with each chapter in her books - alas, I think she has one (possibly two!) more story to tell here.

Year of the Flood has two narrators - both survivors of an apocalyptic event (a "waterless flood"), and both linked from their associations with "God's Gardeners", a religious sect. The two women are of different generations but share the foundations of the Gardeners' beliefs long after they have left the group's compound. The story moves back and forth in time (before and after "The Flood"), describing the lives of the women as they move about, and how they eventually come back together after "The Flood" mentioned in the title of the book.

Atwood's creation of the "Gardeners" is so fascinating - she has gathered the cult's doctrine and principles from 19th-century transcendentalism, Jain and Hindu philosophies, post-modern environmental thought, the zeal of 1970's "born-again" Christianity with a tad of Hare Krishna devotion, the apocalyptic asceticism of the Essenes, as well as the homesteading, return-to-the-land movement of post-Industrial North America. The hierarchy is based around a group of senior leaders, called the Adams and Eves. "Adam One" is the group's leader and "pastor" of sorts, because he teaches the group and is featured in several chapters in the book with some of his sermons, followed by songs that are sung by the Gardeners. (The audiobook version had all of the composed songs with accompaniment, and the songs are also available on Atwood's website.) The group canonizes scientists like Dian Fossey and Jacques Cousteau, and has feast days for St. Rachel Carson and so many other well-known luminaries in the fields of ecology, zoology, and life sciences. They also celebrate days like "Mole Day" and "Predator Day", noting the importance of food chain, the smallest creatures and their contributions, etc.

I will admit, there were a few times that I just had to take a pause, Atwood "blew my mind" more than once.

One of my new favorites, hands down.

I'm kind of surprised with the mixed reviews of his book because I loved it. My third Margeret Atwood Book and it's definitely my favorite. The audio version was fantastic. I would definitely recommend listening to this instead of reading it if you have the choice. This is part 2 of the Maddaddam trilogy. What makes it unique is that it doesn't matter which of the first two you read first. They cover the same time period but from different characters' points of view. You should however read both, because they definitely feed off of each other and are intertwined. I loved how well you get to know the characters. It's hard to describe Atwood's writing style. It's quiet yet beautiful sometimes disturbing, sexy and a little dark. Then there are the underlying themes involving religion and God and nature and belief systems and instinct and morals and human nature and sex. All mixed up in a bowl of futuristic science fiction that seams frightenly possible. I recently read that the secret to good writing is for the author to "show what happens" instead of "telling what happens". This is what makes this author's novel so good. I can't wait for the final book. In the meantime I plan to read some more of Atwood's books.

This book just didn't make any sense! The storyline jumps around so much, it is hard to figure out who is who and why you should care at all. While some of it is quite clever and witty, I realized after about 138 not-too-exciting pages that I didn’t care AT ALL about any of the characters, which, to me, is a sign that continuing on is pointless. Oryx and Crake was very enjoyable, but this was not. Mostly a bunch of nonsense going nowhere....Moving on to a solid historic fiction novel and will not consider the 3rd book in the MaddAdam trilogy.

The Year of the Flood / 978-0-385-53208-2

When I suggested "Year of the Flood" for a book club reading, I knew that it was a sequel to Atwood's apocalyptic "Oryx and Crake", but I had read that the two were so loosely connected that new readers could easily sink into "Year of the Flood" with a minimum of backstory. This turned out to be half-true, half-false.

Almost every character in "The Year of the Flood" either served as a minor character in "Oryx and Crake" or - at the very least - knew Jimmy or Glenn/Crake or Oryx. All the little "throw-away" characters from the previous novel are fleshed out in great detail - Jimmy's mother, his childhood girlfriend, his college roommate - for better or for worse. In some ways, this is great because there was just so much that had to be left unsaid in O&C - for instance, a lot of the world-building was limited by the fact that the narrator was a teenage boy who'd never really lived outside the safeties and securities of the upper-middle class compounds. With YotF, we get to see the same world, pre-apocalypse, from the point of view of the slums and the impoverished that inhabit them.

Sometimes, though, this "6 degrees of connection" between all the characters in the two novels can feel a little gimmicky. Some of this is justified in that many of the novel's characters are members of the same survivalist cult that was, not surprisingly, best prepared to survive the freak and unexpected apocalypse that wiped the earth in O&C. And even the Glenn/Crake connection can seem less of an authorial contrivance and more of a foreboding plot twist - is it just a coincidence that Glenn/Crake became obsessed with wiping out humanity after becoming peripherally involved with a cult that obsessively believed humanity was about to be wiped out?

Despite all this, YotF is very enjoyable and while a lot of the nuance (as in, "oh, that's Jimmy's ex-girlfriend!") will be lost on new readers, it is fairly easy to sink in and get your bearings... until about 2/3 of the way in when the otherworldly "Crakers" show up with their purring and blue skin and suddenly things could get very weird. One of the characters gives a quick explanation, but there's obviously a lot of backstory there that is being skipped.

In the end, as a fan of the first novel, I truly loved "The Year of the Flood" and thought it was a truly wonderful sequel, despite some of the convenient coincidences that abound. The members of my book club that were coming to this novel fresh all really liked the novel as well, even when it didn't make perfect sense, and we're all anxiously waiting for the third novel to come out.

A note about the audio book for this novel: it's quite exquisite. Since the narrative alternates between two female characters, the audio book has two wonderful voice actresses, and they really nail the parts and sound exactly as I would have imagined. The interludes with Adam One's preaching and singing are handled by a third narrator, and the songs are actually fully sung to really lovely music. I'm not usually a fan of "sung" audio books, but this one is performed so naturally and flawlessly that it's a delight.

~ Ana Mardoll

Margaret Atwood and I have an uneasy relationship. I would be hard-pressed to name another living author that writes better dystopian fiction today -- in fact, The Handmaid's Tale is on my Top 10 Best Books of All Time list. But then again, Oryx and Crake -- another of her heralded books of the same vein -- left me totally cold and scratching my head. That aside, I was really looking forward to The Year of the Flood. My understanding was that it was a companion novel to Oryx and Crake, but not dependant upon that book like a sequel.

I'd say that is an apt description of After the Flood. You don't have to read Oryx and Crake to enjoy or understand The Year of the Flood. Unfortunately, if you didn't like Oryx and Crake -- like me -- you probably won't be crazy about After the Flood much, either.

The book focuses on the great Waterless Flood played out in Oryx and Crake through the eyes of two female survivors. Toby, a member of a religious cult called God's Gardeners, has weathered the environmental apocalypse in a women's health spa. Former God's Gardener, and current trapeze artist and high-end escort Ren is locked in the brothel Scales and Tails. The events leading up to the disaster are shown through their eyes, allowing a better view of the story from outside the CorpSeCorps walls. (And incidentally, is there a better name out there for an evil, corporate giant? I don't think so.)

Atwood is a gifted storyteller. She never fails to scare me with her plotlines, which are still speculative fiction, but not outside of the scope of plausibility. The social, environmental and political future she draws is a grim one, and her characters match their environment. Neither Toby nor Ren is especially likeable. But, each is a strong and interesting heroine -- there are no Mary Janes in Margaret Atwood's novels. Her women are flawed and multifaceted and always manage to be real, even in surrreal storylines.

The Year of the Flood made me think, but it was a slow read. At times, I actually felt a little resentful of the book and the amount of time it took to finish. At the end of the day, it was worth the effort - but The Year of the Flood is probably not going to make my "To Re-read List" anytime in the near future.

Continuing in the vein of her most famous novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Ms. Atwood takes us to a not-so-distant future that looks both strangely different and similar to our own time. Conspicuously consuming, environmentally unconscious humans have left much of the planet in ruin. The gap between rich and poor has grown ever larger, though the poor are nipping at the fringes of the gated communities of the rich. Out of it all comes a group calling themselves God's Gardeners, who have vowed to live life in a way that consumes the minimal resources necessary and leaves next to no waste behind. The movement is so dedicated that they've built a religion around it. The book begins with a sermon from the Gardeners' leader Adam One and is interspersed with the liturgy and ritual of their religion - hymns, holidays, more sermons and other religious observances. Adam One also prophesizes the coming of a great "waterless flood" - the flood of the title. In an endnote, Atwood relates that the teachings and practices of God's Gardener's didn't all come from her imagination - some ultra-environmentalists are already trying to live in this manner. Ms. Atwood has had the hymns set to music and performed in Hymns of the God's Gardeners; Lyrics from Year of the Flood.

Living among God's Gardeners isn't easy (at times it's similar to Cormac McCarthy's The Road), but in the cases of several characters, it's the only way to survive when life in the rest of the world has cast them aside. "The Year of the Flood" will make you think hard about the risks of mankind's current mode of consuming nature's resources and leaving piles of waste behind. It will also make you consider what your life and your children and grandchildren's lives might be like if current trends aren't reversed.

The characters and plot will carry you through the story, but I got more out of thinking about the bigger issues that Atwood addresses in this novel. Four stars for all readers, and five stars for those interested in environmentalism or theology.

It's hard not to compare `The Year of the Flood' to `Oryx and Crake' Atwood's post-apocalyptic 2002 novel. While Flood is not a sequel to the previous novel, it is a companion piece, sharing a common place and time. It has been billed as a stand-alone story and while it's true that you can read `The Year of the Flood' without reading Oryx and Crake, one of the more interesting aspects of reading Flood is seeing how Atwood connects the dots between the two novels. It may not be necessary read O&C first to enjoy Flood, but it seems to me that a layer of the novel would be missing.

I enjoyed reading `The Year of the Flood' but I couldn't help but think how much better a novel Oryx and Crake was. It's a darker, more disturbing, and more complex novel than Flood. Atwood described O&C as "a joke-filled, fun-packed rollicking adventure story about the downfall of the human race." She was kidding (a little), but the bottom line is O&C is more ambitious, more perceptive, and more interesting than Flood.

The Year of the Flood also features a constant barrage of remarkable coincidences. Virtually all of humanity dies in a plague and yet it seems that the only survivors were people the two female protagonists knew and they keep running into each other. Jimmy from O&C keeps turning up and it strains credibility a little. I thought maybe Atwood would provide some explanation for why these people survive (aside from being isolated at the time of the plague) but nothing is offered. It appears that it is all just a coincidence, which ends up feeling a little too contrived and convenient.

The greatest strength of the novel is the richly imagined and fully developed religion that forms the core of the novel. "God's Gardeners" is a clever merging of religion and science. There is a satirical edge to God's Gardeners that provides the perfect venue for Atwood's razor sharp wit. The novel's narrative is interspersed with sermons from Adam One to his flock that are often amusing in their earnestness. For example, Adam One speaks to his struggling flock as they roam the wasteland following the waterless flood that has wiped out virtually all of humankind, speaking about one of their followers savagely killed by wild dogs he says: "...via a conduit of a wild dog pack she has now made the ultimate sacrifice to her fellow creatures and has become part of God's great dance of proteins."

All in all, I enjoyed The Year of the Flood. If you are in the mood for a post-apocalyptic novel and you haven't read Oryx and Crake, I highly recommend reading it first, in part because you will appreciate Year of the Flood more after reading it, but mostly because it is a much better novel. The Year of the Flood is well worth reading, if for no other reason than to experience God's Gardeners, it just pales in comparison to novels by Atwood like O&C and The Handmaid's Tale that tread on similar ground.

Margaret Atwood’s “Year of the Flood” focuses on the story of an environmentalist cult, many of whose members will ultimately survive the plague wreaking havoc, for a variety of reasons. These people have anticipated this event for so long they’re more prepared than anyone else, or at least the ones that survived the initial epidemic are. This group of people has created their own ideology which melds science and nature woven into the nature of religion, which was really quite intriguing. The reader follows Ren and Toby, both members of the “green cult” called the Gardeners. These two women are from very different background, and have many years separating them. Atwood smartly uses alternating points of view to tell their stories, which was a welcome development as to not let us get confused between the women. Ren’s chapters are told in first person whereas Toby’s are told in third.

The reader can sense Atwood’s contempt for the companies featured (ie CorpSeCorps) utter disregard of the environment and health, just to prove their profit and loss statements. Gerry Canavan suggests in his article, “Apocalypse reminds us that the logic of consumer capitalism is not, in fact, timeless and eternal; there was a time before it, and there will be a time after it.” The constant reminders are throughout “The Year of the Flood” concerning this, creatively in fact, with the names for the companies in addition to the unprovoked opinions from the characters. He goes on to say, “So-called ‘deep ecology,’ both in and outside science fiction, has long wrestled with precisely this fraught relationship with catastrophe and extinction in its push for a human race with so light an ecological footprint so as to (at the extreme end of its logic) be erased from the planet altogether.”

The world that Atwood created is ruled by corporations, a world that deals death and exhaustion regularly. She showcases how disconnected we are from the planet nourishes us. Atwood shows the reader what could happen if we continue on this course, living in inequality and greed. Canavan also cites Lawrence Buell, “who noted, ‘Apocalypse is the single most powerful master metaphor that the contemporary environmental imagination has at its disposal.’” This powerfully ties into climate change fiction, and whether or not it can have a change on the discourse the subject, and invoke passionate conversation from a wider audience. Due to the immense popularity of Atwood’s novels, I think this trilogy has a chance to bring these issues to the forefront of discussion.

Reference: Gerry Canavan, “Hope, But Not for Us: Ecological Science Fiction and the End of the World in Margaret Atwood’sOryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood”

"The Year of the Flood" is the twelfth novel by celebrated author Margaret Atwood, and a follow-up to her 2003 Man Booker-shortlisted work "Oryx and Crake". In the near future, most of humankind is wiped out by an unknown plague. Ren and Toby are two women who have managed to avoid infection, and as they seek out other potential survivors, each recounts her own story of life before the catastrophe. Both used to belong to a sect known as the God's Gardeners: quasi-religious, vegetarian environmentalists, led by the mysterious Adam One, who live the simple life in their rooftop gardens and peddle a cobbled-together doctrine that combines Scripture with scientific knowledge. Harassed by the authorities, they alone predicted the coming catastrophe - calling it the Waterless Flood - yet they could not stop it.

The story parallels that of "Oryx and Crake", but using a fresh perspective. Whereas the former novel explored the lives of the elite - the wealthy, the educated and the technocrats - this one takes as its subject the ghetto-like 'pleeblands' - the marginalised and disenfranchised sections of society. And just as the first novel told events from the male perspective, so "The Year of the Flood" employs female narrators, so providing a necessary balance. The characters are not mere ciphers, either, but are presented as fully-rounded human beings: conflicted and occasionally irrational, often idealistic but at the same time prone to the temptations of the materialistic world that the Gardeners (overtly, at least) shun.

Indeed it is the characters' individual journeys that carry the reader along, more so than the plot, which - it must be said - is rather thin, especially for those who have read the first novel and so are already familiar with the story behind the Waterless Flood. The pace and tension drain away in the last hundred pages especially and there is no real climax to speak of, although in typical Atwood style the final words offer a new development which means that the reader is left hanging mid-action. The possibility of another book in the same setting is not closed off, then, although - just as with this novel - it is difficult to see whether there is anything new to be said, or whether it would simply be retreading old ground.

It is hard to be too critical, though. Indeed on the whole "The Year of the Flood" is an absorbing read which is difficult to put down, presenting as it does an all-too plausible future while at the same time offering plenty of food for thought on the future of consumerism, the commodification of sex, gender roles (a common theme in the author's work) and the need for morality in science. Although the future that Atwood sets out is bleak and depressing, it is vividly realised in such a way that the reader is always captivated.

Please note: There are mild spoilers in this review.

The Year of the Flood is not a sequel to Atwood's dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, but rather a companion to it. It takes place at the same time and depicts the same events, with many of the same characters, but from a very different perspective. Atwood's vision of our future is of a bleak, corporatized monoculture, where everything has been made into a commodity, and human emotions all but done away with. Guarded, gated corporate-states churn out useless genetically engineered animals and unnecessary drugs while the poor eke out an existence in the vast malls and slums of the "pleeblands." Then, a bioengineered virus pretty much wipes out humanity overnight, leaving only a few survivors to relate the two tales. Eventually, the two storylines merge, shedding light on the abrupt end of Oryx and Crake. Although it is not strictly necessary, I believe it would help the reader understand The Year of the Flood after already having read Oryx and Crake.

The narrative alternates between the points of view of the two main characters, Toby and Ren. Each woman is telling her story post-apocalypse, first relating a little of how she managed to survive, then flashing back to the events of her life before the virus swept through. Both begin their stories as members of the anti-consumerist cult God's Gardeners (which also appeared in Oryx and Crake), but each has to leave the group for different reasons, and their storylines separate. Each section, alternating Toby and Ren, begins with a sermon given by Adam One, the leader of God's Gardeners, followed by a hymn commemorating one of the cult's saint days (there is one for every day). These sermons let the reader know the fate of the group after Toby and Ren leaves and the apocalypse, which they call the "Waterless Flood," occurs. Eventually, Toby's and Ren's stories catch up to the present and converge as the two separated characters come together again.

Toby and Ren are both victims of the commoditized, dysfunctional world they inhabit. They are each left without means of support after their fathers die in spectacularly unpleasant circumstances and they are abruptly on their own. They start out as victims: Toby of a psychotic rapist who continues to pursue her after her escape into God's Gardeners; Ren of her mother's capriciousness, until she winds up working in a sex club. After the Waterless Flood, they must each overcome their victimhood and become self-sufficient. They discover how to be themselves. In fact, the apocalypse might have been the best thing to ever happen to them, as it releases them from their societally imposed prisons.

The Year of the Flood ends much as Oryx and Crake did, with the focal characters encountering a mysterious group in the deserted forest. As in Oryx and Crake, the ending is very abrupt and a trifle unsatisfying, which leads me to believe that Atwood -- although disavowing her role as a science fiction writer -- is writing in the great tradition of the science fiction trilogy. If so, I eagerly await the last installment.

This is an absolutely wonderful book that defies genre classification. Its essentially a coming of age-apocalytic-science fiction-environmental novel. And then some. Set in a near but disturbing future, the book has plenty of action and drama, balanced with the songs and stories of a group known as the Gardeners, who are trying to save what's left of the human race.

The plot involves the adventures and misadventures of a stripper and another woman who works in a beauty spa. Atwood creates a plausible future both with telling details and excellent writing. I was also really pleased to find that a real love and respect for animals runs though out the book. This story is far more than a science fiction novel and deserves a place among the better serious literary efforts of the last several years. I would highly recommend it.

Atwood's dystopian vision came to light in 'The Handmaid's Tale', with a disturbing tale of what happens when procreation is marshalled and state-owned. It delved deeper into the post-apocalyptic landscape in 'Oryx and Crake' (the image of a car-dump shoreline lingers long after that novel closed for me), and now takes a step back to see how man grapples with mortality in the days before that same environmental catastrophe wipes out the human race in 'The Year of the Flood'.

The answer appears to dwell in polarities: some seek solace in extreme depravity, in state-controlled sex clubs fed with the ultimate drug, Blysspluss, endorsed by the CorpSeCorps, the privately-owned totalitarian policing force. The renegades against this regime form cultish groups according to their affiliations. One such group gravitates towards a greater force in nature and science, turning their beliefs into a religion, calling themselves God's Gardeners (who made an appearance in 'Oryx and Crake').

Much of the novel centres on this group and focuses on two female characters, Toby and Ren, accidental and circumstantial members. The structure of the novel is segmented into parts that resemble a liturgy of sorts, with a call to worship by the leader, Adam One, on important dates in the Gardeners' religious calendar, accompanied by a hymn from the God Gardeners' Hymnal. (This attention to detail is eerily comprehensive with actual music to these hymns that you can buy from Atwood's website).

While the larger theme in this book dwells on the group's preparations for the coming waterless flood (with a biblical nod to the first flood in Noah's time) by their salvaging and cultivating all things organic in an increasingly synthetic world, the book essentially interweaves on a more personal level, Toby's narrative with Ren's. This technique is both successful and disappointing.

It is successful because Atwood counterpoints the male protagonist, Jimmy's perspective seen in 'Oryx and Crake' with female ones in this novel. However, at times, the romantic concerns and pursuits of Toby and Ren read like a sappy Hallmark TV movie. (I can picture Lindsay Wagner as Toby for some reason.) I suppose they are meant to be touching episodes to show how human longing for intimacy is a constant even in catastrophic times. Howver, Toby's hidden feelings for a fellow Steven Seagal-like character (ponytail intact) in the group was not convincingly played out. More moving, perhaps, is Ren's damaged teenaged love for Jimmy.

That said, Atwood's novel is a fine follow-up to 'Oryx and Crake' and the future she depicts in these pages are not unimaginable, which makes it all the more chilling.

The Year of the Flood is a companion novel (or, as I've seen it sometimes called sidequel) to Oryx and Crake. While the book is inferior to its predecessor IMO, it is still a remarkable work of speculative fiction.

Set at approximately the same time as Oryx and Crake,The Year of the Flood follows the fates of two female survivors of the Waterless Flood - an epidemic orchestrated by Crake. Ren is a trapeze dancer at a sex club locked in its quarantine room and Toby is barricaded in a spa stocked with many edible treatments. Both women have once belonged to the cult of the God's Gardeners - a religion, organic vegetarian in nature, which is devoted to the preservation of all plant and animal life. In many ways thanks to this affiliation Ren and Toby are able to survive the Flood.

Just like in Oryx and Crake, Atwood takes us through the life stories of her characters, constantly switching from one perspective to another, from past to present, gradually revealing the events that have led to the Flood. This time not from the perspective of Snowman/Jimmy, a close friend of Crake's, but from the POV of ordinary people living in pleeblands. What is memorable about this sidequel is the skill with which Atwood brings the characters familiar to us from Oryx and Crake into the story. We get a glimpse at them from a different angle and learn how the God's Gardeners' teachings might have affected Crake's final idea of perfect humans, how the epidemic was spread, etc. The characters' live stories are intertwined in a very intricate way.

What makes this companion inferior to its predecessor is probably the familiarity of the world and the events. The ideas of chaotic gene-splicing, creation of supreme beings, and annihilation of humanity are no longer new or shocking. Instead, Atwood concentrates on exploring the possible avenues religious thought can take under the circumstances, relationships between women (as usual, Atwood's view of men is very unflattering), vegetarianism (some disturbing meat imagery here). Somehow it all makes the book a little duller, less intense than Oryx and Crake.

The ending in Atwood's signature way is very open. What is the fate of humanity? What is in store for the Crakers? Did Crake's plan to establish a new better civilization even work?

No one has the ability to comment on the current state of affairs by using storylines of possible future worlds the way that Margaret Atwood does. Which is probably why I am so drawn to her words, her work. It's never a happy, joyful read and usually just the opposite...but the chilling truths that shine through keep me coming back time and time again.

In "The Year of the Flood", she does it again. As a companion to the amazing "Oryx and Crake", this book examines a possible future in which the corporations become the ruling powers...and the pharmaceutical industry runs amok. Sound familiar?

A group known as "God's Gardeners" splits off, seeing the inevitable destruction of the planet due to the raping and pillaging of the human race. Much of the books takes place in their world as they prepare for the "Waterless Flood" they see coming that will change the world forever. They work as best they can in the world that is left, knowing that the only thing they might be able to save is themselves.

"...the CorpSeCorps run the mobs, and according to our information they've declared us off-limits." "Why would they bother to do that?" asked Toby. "It would be bad for them to eviscerate anything with God in its name," said Adam One. "The corporations wouldn't approve of it, considering the influence of the Petrobaptists and the Known Fruits among them. They claim to respect the Spirit and to favour religious toleration, as long as the religions don't take to blowing things up: they have an aversion to the destruction of private property." "They can't possibly like us," said Toby. "Of course not," said Adam One. "They view us as twisted fanatics who combine food extremism with bad fashion sense and a puritanical attitude towards shopping. But we own nothing they want, so we don't qualify as terrorists."

So there's humor as well...

And even though you know how things are going to end, generally, the road getting there provides a fascinating journey. The main characters are very well drawn, and give the reader an insight on how close our current world is to theirs...how the world's current path seems to lead right to where they find themselves.

True, I read most of Atwood's books feeling as if I have blinders on. There's so much more going on that I know I am missing...but that just gets me to read her books over again. The richness of the story, of the warnings, of the messages...of what she imparts to the reader through the voices of her characters.

"Glen used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, "I'll be dead," you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar. As so was God, because as soon as there's a past tense, there has to be a past before the past, and you keep going back in time until you get to I don't know, and that's what God is. It's what you don't know - the dark, the hidden, the underside of the visible, and all because we have grammar..."

Amazing...

Margaret Atwood's new novel "The Year of the Flood" returns her readers to the future dystopian world she created in 2003's "Oryx and Crake". A super virus created by human scientists as a pleasure drug has quickly killed almost all of the human race. A few survivors remain, but they must fight against each other and the animal super splices created by humans before the virus, to survive. This book focuses on two women--Toby and Ren--both former members of the God's Gardners cult who each believe they are the only person left on the planet. As Toby and Ren fully discover the horrors of their new world they realize what a struggle it will take to survive.

This novel is a classic Atwood dystopian nightmare, where some of the scariest aspects of modern society of gotten loose to disasterous effect. Similar to in Oryx and Crake, what is loose here is genetic engineering and corporate greed, which together have left human society vulenrable to a super virus. If you have liked Atwoods previous works along this line (Oryx and Crake, the Handmaid's Tale) then you will enjoy this novel. If not, then this is probably something you should skip.

Personally I find Atwood's novels to be a terrifying vision of what a future American society could be, and a wake up call regarding current societal excess. I only wish that this novel had a more concrete ending, it felt like it should have had a to be continued page. But overall, this was well worth the read.

Margaret Atwood has a vivid imagination. She has once again envisioned a bleak and desolate future. Greedy corporations have reaped enormous profit and power. Gene splicing has created odd and dangerous life forms. The environment has been ruined and violence lurks around every street corner.

The Year of the Flood is a companion piece to Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx and Crake. It is not a sequel, but rather a re-telling from a different point of view. This book is centered on Adam One and his religious sect God's Gardeners. The gardeners revere all life forms as well as the Earth itself. Adam One predicts an upcoming "waterless flood", in which most life on Earth will be destroyed. The Gardeners prepare for this eventuality and do all they can to live an environmentally responsible life.

The "flood" takes the form of a bio-engineered plague which wipes out most of humanity, but spares animal and plant life. God's Gardeners are uniquely suited to survive the plague, and to navigate this new world. The Year of the Flood is told from the point of view of two women who have survived the plague and are struggling to survive.

This novel presents a frightening vision of the future. It is very well-written and worthwhile reading. Once again, Margaret Atwood proves to be a gifted writer. In addition to envisioning a world, Atwood has created the religion of God's Gardeners. Many of the chapters end with hymns from the God's Gardeners Oral Book of Psalms. These have even been recorded! So, if you're not disturbed by the prospect of a dismal future where humankind is destroyed by a terrible plague, then go read this novel.

I haven't read Oryx and Crake, and in fact haven't read anything by Atwood but The Handmaid's Tale long ago. But I certainly plan to read more now. I found this book riveting, all the more so because her vision of the future looks so plausible based on today's headlines (which I guess is partly what makes any dystopian novel successful.) I liked that this vision of the future wasn't solely based on magnifying current perceived 'negative' trends like climate change and the consolidation of corporate power. Atwood also brings forward many current 'positive' trends like green products, organic food, holistic healing, etc. but shows how these have become consumerized to the point where they aren't really positive anymore. In a way this book is a treatise on the arrogance of humanity more than anything else, because it's the attempts to control the future - from both the book's conservatives and progressives - that keep causing problems. I also thought the God's Gardener's religion was a very credible extrapolation of current spiritual/new age trends (many of which I ascribe to, so this was an interesting twist on them.)

I didn't find the cutesy product names annoying like some other reviewers did - they felt plausible in this hyper-consumerized 'plastic' world Atwood created. And some just made me laugh out loud - Secret Burgers, made of mystery meat, 'because everybody loves a secret!' - now come on, that's funny. I also did connect to the two main female characters, Toby and Ren. They weren't warm and fuzzy, but no one is in Atwood's world. They were interesting though, and that's what mattered to me.

I remember that Joseph Campbell said something about how we need a new religion within which we would worship Gaia, the earth, because that is the only kind of religion that could save humanity, or something to that effect. And I kept thinking about that when I was reading about Margaret Atwood's Gardeners, the recycling, herb studying, plant growers with their Veggie Vows and lessons and hymns that teach survival skills and encourage the stockpiling of resources.

The Gardeners, who affirm their Primate ancestry, promise to never take any pill made by a Corporation, and don't bother with marriage ceremonies (how refreshing), live in opposition to the Corps, corporations that control everything, encourage the unparticular consumption of animal protein (Secret Burgers can contain anything, even human meat), and deliberately cause diseases with their medicine, so they can profit from the then necessary treatments. There is no middle class (imagine that), just the gated communities of the Corps--- vs. Pleebland, where everyone else lives, a not so nice place.

Gardeners take a stance against commercial activities and try to prepare people for survival of the coming Waterless Flood, which is something that is hanging over their heads that they feel will end civilization as they know it, because of Corporate mentality--- rape of the earth, mistreatment of animals, genetic experiments that either aim for immortality or the creation of new species, and/or disregard of fellow creatures.

The parallels between the world of the Corps and our present day situation are hard to miss, especially when a Gardener prays for "... those who have murdered God's Creatures, and extinguished His Species; those who have tortured in the name of Law: who have worshipped nothing but riches; and who, to gain wealth and worldly power, have inflicted pain and death."

Skip this one; there is nothing but sexist tripe here. Atwood drones and drones on the animalistic nature of men and perfection that is woman. Then prepare yourself for more droning; men are oafish and evil; women are perfection, then drone, drone, and drone some more. Agony until the end of this horrid waste of time.

This is a dark and quirky world. The Gardeners are one of the groups of people living outside the corporate compounds and wary of the pleebs and their turf wars. They are vegetarians but with a warmth and wryness that is appealing; while the corporate world from which they have withdrawn or escaped includes the appalling Big Pharma companies that sell infection in their health supplements in order to make a killing selling the cures--which do not always work. One of their creations leads to the Waterless Flood.
"We are using up the Earth" and it is almost all gone, is their creed. But the characters though quirky are engaging, the story line complex but comprehensible, and the writing is full of gems--"he'd smell comforting ... like rained on grass and cinnamon, and the salty, vinegary, singed leaf smell of the Gardeners"; "if nothing's the problem, work with nothing"; "maybe that's what love is--being pissed off."

Hi folks. Since this is review #113 for this book, I feel no need to offer a plot synopsis, explanation of dystopian fiction or speculative fiction as categories, or to comment on Atwood's previous literary output. It HAS been interesting to scan the range of positive and negative reviews on this site.

I did read "Oryx and Crake" before tackling this, but now I see that was hardly necessary. "Year" is IMHO a stronger, more fully realized effort, much more fun to read, more engaging. Atwood has indeed managed to take a scary, dreadful scenario and treat it with wit, love, and deep insight. (I think it helps that her central characters this time around are women!)

People who object to the fanciful commercial names given to various enterprises or animals, whatever ("ANooYoo") because they're not all that funny or clever -- you're missing the point! OF COURSE they're not all that funny or clever. For that very reason they represent the most scathing possible satire of our current commercial culture.

For those dolts who want every plot detail to be "believable," get over it. The basic plot is no more far-fetched than much of what you'll encounter in Jane Austen or Charles Dickens. This is a fantasy. Just put your imagination (if you have one) on a slightly longer leash, and you'll enjoy it.

The Gardeners' Hymns, BTW, are a gas! (As with the commercial names, just the right mix of Victorian/Edwardian stiffness and modern positive-think!) Thank you so much Margaret Atwood!

"The Year of the Flood" is an enjoyable and imaginative accompaniment to "Oryx and Crake" with the main focus on the pleeblands and an eco-religious cult known as "God's Gardeners" complete with hymns, sermons and saints' days. The story is told from two perspectives: Toby, a adult female, and Ren, a younger girl.

I read Oryx and Crake some time ago and couldn't remember all the detail so it was nice to revisit the same world. I enjoyed the opportunity to read more of another aspect of the world that Atwood had created and read more about what came before the waterless flood. It was really good fun to read and the only downside for me was the convenience of the latter events of the story.

If you have not already read Oryx and Crake, then I would recommend that you read it before reading The Year of the Flood. There are some cross-overs which would be spoilers if you read Oryx and Crake after reading The Year of the Flood. The Year of the Flood can be read as a standalone book though, you don't have to had read Oryx and Crake first.

As the book is a futuristic dystopia, it may be categorised as 'science fiction' but this is not really sci-fi as the future science is more incidental, it's better categorised as 'speculative fiction'. The book examines more of how life could be in the future and it's often frightening in the sense of the world that Atwood paints is a difficult place full of struggle. I'm going to start building up my ararat (read the book to find out what it is) as soon as possible!

The Year of the Flood takes place basically in the same time and place as Oryx and Crake. The two books, with several overlapping characters, are almost like two halves of a jigsaw puzzle with pieces that interlock. I definitely recommend reading Oryx and Crake first. Although The Year of the Flood can stand on its own, there were many "Aha!" moments when I recognized a character or incident from the earlier book. One reviewer wrote that you could read them in either order, but The Year of the Flood is more hopeful, and the two female narrators are so much more heroic and likeable than Jimmy/Snowman was in Oryx and Crake. In The Year of the Flood, Ren and Toby are members of a group called God's Gardeners who are eschewing the lifestyle of the rest of the population in favor of trying to preserve what's left of Earth's dwindling resources. Their leader has predicted a Waterless Flood, and that's exactly what transpires when the plague hits. Atwood's projections of what the world could be like in the not-too-distant future is chilling and depressing, but she peppers the story with vivid descriptions of the landscape and sometimes colorful hybrid animals. I have to admit that I was somewhat grossed out by the various purposes that maggots serve in the God's Gardeners community, but the group's reliance on nature is what characterizes them and prepares the survivors for the resourcefulness that they'll need after the plague. I hope there's a third book in the offing.

The Year of the Flood is a novel that brings forth cli-fi, religion, and the ugly truths about prostitution, class and corporations. The novel itself is about a religious group called the gardeners who are aware of an impending “waterless flood” about to take place. The gardeners find peace in living a simple life with no meat, they only wear recycled clothes, and believe in their faith more than anything else. They are founded on the fact that they believe the human race has strayed away from what God originally set out for us, and with the world being run by less than moral corporations that’s not exactly not true. What I really enjoyed most bout this book were the flash backs. It really surprised me that a lot of people found it really hard to follow and even thought that the flashbacks weren’t important to the story. The flashbacks, for me, gave the context for everything that was going on. They explained why things were the way they were at this present moment in time, and even showed us a different side of the characters. One of the most interesting things about the books for me were the elements of prostitution and corporations that seem to go hand in hand with these dystopian societies. The fact that both girls were stuck in opposite sides of the spectrum with one being stuck in a high end day spa while the other is stuck in the “cleaning room” of a strip and prostitute club where the girls would go to get tested for STI’s. I thought it was really interesting how Atwood showed these two sides in great detail and how they definitely relate to the actual struggles that some girls go through today. Maybe not the being stuck in the room parts, but definitely the high class and low class “doing-what-needs-to-be-done” work ethic. What really is different is you’d think it would be Ren who would have this deep hatred for the corporations because she’s in the current situation she’s in but its actually Toby. Toby’s whole entire life has been abandoned because her father shot himself with a rifle…and she couldn’t even report it because the blame of having any firearm at all would fall back on her. So she’s stuck abandoning her entire identity and going underground all for the sake of staying alive. Just when you think things can’t possibly get worse for her, she gets a job and falls under the eye of a her manager who happens to be a sexual predator. He objectifies women and turns them into his own personal sex slave just for the thrill of it. The importance of class is all too relevant when we see how there are definitively two different types of people, those who live in the corporate compounds and those who find refuge in the slums. The corporations run the world like a drug cartel, and if you cross them or get in the way of their agenda you will probably find yourself dead in a ditch somewhere. At the end of the book we can see how Toby starts to see through this, and how she notices that only the few, the privileged are reaping the benefits. Atwood does a great job of bringing in a serious problem into a book that at first glance is just about climate change. I think this book is a lot more than what it looks like on the surface, with so many back stories and other things going on that makes it turn into one cohesive work about many major social problems.

Better than book one and book three, I really liked that it told the story from another person's perspective, but the story was strange. Although it was hauntingly familiar. The author really focuses on our economic and lifestyle structures and where they will end up in the future, makes you think...

Another wonderful story from Atwood, YotF introduces us to the world outside the compounds of Oryx and Crake. It is a different place, where everyone is competing for resources and turf, with the worst offenders being caught and sent to Painball as punishment. This backdrop serves to introduce us to Ren and Toby, two members of God's Gardeners, a religion that seems to eschew all things modern in order to prepare for the upcoming Waterless Flood.

Ren and Toby each have heartbreaking stories, and while this is a future where rakunks are pets, their story is what happens to a lot of women on the fringe of society, especially Ren, who returns to the compounds only to be abandoned and rejected by her mother.

Ultimately, this story ends the same way that Oryx and Crake ended for me - I want to know more about what happens next to all the survivors. How do they go about dealing with the blue people, and do they/are they able to cross-breed with them. How does one go about rebuilding a world destroyed by one maniac who sees that the only cleansing that can happen is by playing God and wiping out the previous to bring about the new order, only without developing a contingency plan for when some vestiges of the old order survive.

*SPOILERS* I love Atwood and have read most of her books, normally finding them in the 4-5 star range. Enough other people have extolled the virtues of this book that I don't need to add to them since I agree with quite a few. I'm writing a more negative review because I wish I had known how silly things could get, especially at the end.

1. Ren, Amanda, and the boys leave the sex club and go through the woods. They're attacked by the thugs. How does Ren escape when the thugs chiefly want captive females to abuse? How do the boys escape, except for the youngest? Why don't the older brothers hunt down the thugs for revenge instead of herding sheep?

2. Why does Amanda cross half the country just to get Ren out of her sealed compartment? They were close, but not that close, and it strains credibility that this would be her only mission, this basically selfish survivalist before the Flood.

3. With all the precautions taken, how could Adam One and some others catch the disease? Why don't the others (Rebeca et al) get sick too?

4. How could people keep intersecting with Jimmy and Glenn? Why would the worst thug fixate entirely on Toby no matter what happened to him, which was a lot?

5. Why would Ren and Toby, who were never fully believing of the religion, frame so many of their thoughts later in that religion's perspective, repeatedly quoting Adam One in their minds and trying to follow the cult's ways after the Flood? It wasn't like the cult had proven it had all the answers.

6. Before the Flood, with all the menace from the street gangs, why didn't the cult people always travel in groups for their own safety? These kids weren't mere pests--they were dangerous.

7. Once we find out that the Adams and Eves have a computer and an underground network and aren't just a cult of fanatics, and that network becomes more active as things get worse in the world, why does Adam One become less street-smart and calculating and more one-dimensional as a self-brainwashed cult leader?

Now on the plus side, there are some indelible quotes I enjoyed amongst all the great writing. One of them: Lucerne cutting off Ren, who's hurt that her mother abandoned her "like firing the maid." I'll never forget that one.

After reading and loving "Oryx And Crake", I was eagerly anticipating the release of "The Year Of The Flood". And happily, I was not disappointed. "The Year Of The Flood" is a companion book to "Oryx And Crake", meaning this story takes place during the same time as "Oryx And Crake". It's not a sequel. Through the stories of Ren and Toby, we learn more about what it was like to live in the pleeblands, outside of the Helthwyzer complex. We also learn about the Gardeners, a cult-like group that has unforeseen influence on the men instrumental to the catastrophe to come (Snowman and Crake).

Why did I rate this only four stars? Because I found the first few chapters very confusing. It took a while for me to figure out what was going on. If this happens to you, don't give up. The payoff is well worth the time and effort. I also found the first half of the book a bit slow. The characters were very interesting, though, and by the time I reached the halfway point, I could not put this book down. I am not sure if Ms. Atwood is planning to write a sequel, but I would love to read it. I'd especially love to read more about Zeb and Adam One and their time at the Helthwyzer complex. Really enjoyed this one!

I received The Year of the Flood as a Christmas gift. In anticipation, I reread Oryx and Crake. Like many others, I too look forward to a third novel, which I hope takes us further into time than these two, to bring about a solution to Atwood's dissolution of the world.

This scary story makes me look at the life with different eyes, and reminds me why I have a set of herbal healing books on my shelf. God's Gardeners are wise, and to be commended, until one learns that some of them are instrumental in bringing about the destructive "waterless flood" their leader predicts.

One difference between the two books is who the adversaries are. In Oryx and Crake, the animals seem to be the most frightening enemies. The Year of the Flood has those same viscious intelligent animals, but adds a criminal element that also survives.

Yet the book ends with the possibility of forgiveness, at least from Toby's perspective, despite the fact that she has suffered at the hands of evil. Will the third book show a world where evil is overcome by love? Is forgiveness believable in that world or in this?

A very thought provoking book. Well done!

This book is a follow up to Atwood's 2003 dystopic masterpiece 'Oryx and Crake' and is part of the MaddAdam trilogy. But it's not quite a sequel. It takes place in the same bioengineered world in the aftermath of the supervirus outbreak, which has decimated most of human population.

Unlike the first book, which is very dystopic in nature, where characters are pawns in a great cautionary tale of morality, this one feels less like dystopic lit. In fact, it's more lit than dystopic. Atwood sparsely handed out information about the strange new world although has a bit more to stay about the Old World that was decimated by the plague.

The difference doesn't stop there. This book revolved around a different set of characters--some of them have appeared in the first book--and runs on a different, almost parallel timeline, which converged with the first book in the end.

'Flood' mainly tells the story of the God's Gardeners, a religious group that advocates the return to all things natural, respect for life, but more importantly it is a group that has foretold apocalypse, calling it "The Waterless Flood" and has endeavoured to equipping their members with urban survival skills in order to outlive the ordeal.

This book has adopted a different writing style to 'Oryx and Crake': The narration alternates between two female characters, Ren and Toby, in first person voice and jumps between past and present (we have the chapter titles to guide us in this). This stylistic choice allows us to understand and sympathize with them but it can be annoying to be reading differenr 'lingos' and narrative styles as you switch from one person to another, as well as jumping from one time space to another.

Both Ren and Toby had heartbreaking personal stories to offer. Atwood was masterfully depicted how suffering and tragedy have differenr effect on people: Toby toughened or turned "leathery" whereas Ren grew "detached" yet emotionally frail.

The chapters are linked by a sermon and hymns by the God's Gardeners, which not only provides great insight into the movement but also some context of what is going on external to the characters. However, I must say I disliked how the sermons and hymns actually "break up" the story--The great temptation here is to skip them and launch straight into the next chapter, but there is a risk that I may miss something, so I would always stop and carefully read them, which eventually diffuses some of the tension.

Another criticism is related to character development. The female characters were given a lot of depth but male characters were mostly left undeveloped. They all seem very stereotypical, with only two things in mind: The quest to expand and claim power and sex. Despite of the fact that the leader of God's Gardener is male (aptly calls himself Adam One), we know very little of him, nor of his counterpart, MaddAdam. Both were supposed to be instrumental in the 'construction' of the new world. And yet we are left with little.

Finally, there are parts of 'Flood' that is staged and, to some extent, written like some of the post apocalyptic adventure novels out there. You know, the part where they sling the rifle and provisions and march on foot through wasteland running from or in pursuit of something? And they finally overcome adversity in the most heroic way? I find that some bits were saturated in cliches, especially one action scene in end. If they were meant to be satyrical, then they may be missing that kitsch punchline.

Nevertheless, I don't know any other writer, who can get away with putting so much blood, gore and violence yet is still able to infuse beauty and optimisim into the pages. This can be attributed to Atwood's brilliant depiction of how religion and one's faith evolve in times of such unimaginable adversity. Or it could be traced back to Atwood's ability to convincingly portray the psyche of survivors and the art of survivalism. Either way, it is a great read, and certainly readers of 'Oryx and Crake' would be delighted to find how pieces from 'Flood' seamlessly fit into the big puzzle that is MaddAdam.

The Year of the Flood isn't brilliant science fiction or brilliant literature, but it's a decent read for those interested in speculative fiction. Unlike many other readers, my favorite parts of the novel are Adam One's speeches and related hymns. There are some real gems of insight into their beliefs, and how these beliefs would play out in a "real world" situation. However, as a devoted and attentive reader of all things science fiction, I was disappointed in what I regard as intellectual laziness in TYOTF. I find the details of the future depicted in TYOTF unlikely -- why are they watching DVDs, rather than streaming multimedia? Why do they use the internet exactly as we do today, rather than as a more evolved/enmeshed medium? Why do they have phones that are described as functioning nearly the same as current cell phones (wouldn't they have developed a more sophisticated and integrated technology?) Maybe Atwood was trying to make a point that "positive" technological development has stalled, while damaging genetic technology has flourished, but if so, this wasn't made clear. The theme appears to be "all human technology is bad". But I don't buy this argument "straight up" -- I'd like more of an intellectual debate about it.

Spoiler Alert:
Also, the trajectory of the virus seems unrealistic. If the virus only spreads and lives in living human beings, wouldn't people have figured this out quickly, and avoided all human contact? Or did the people in the future get mysteriously dumb? Wouldn't there be many pockets of isolated individuals all over the world whom, due to their isolation, were not exposed (I'm thinking people on small islands and other geographically isolated communities, etc.) There appears to still be woodland and undeveloped areas on earth - why didn't the Gardeners set up an outpost there, in anticipation? Where did Adam One come from and what's his background? I thought that would be fully explained, and that this explanation would give me insight into why the Gardeners act the way they do, but it was left out.

Adam One, the leader of the quasi-religious eco-cult caller God's Gardeners, had long predicted the coming of a plague, a Waterless Flood that would destroy all human life and as the story begins, it seems that he has been proven right.
We meet our two heroines, the older, tougher Toby and Ren, a worker in an upscale sex club. Both find themselves, through peculiar circumstances, still alive after what turns out to be a bio-engineered virus sweeps through. In the midst of the horror of the dead, each wonders if they are only person alive and yet also fearing who else, what else, might be out there.

As the story progresses, the chapters move back and forth in time and we learn how these two women came to be where they are. Society, in this future that Atwood speculates about, is bizarre and disturbing, maybe most of all because it is not totally unbelievable. There appears to be no government. The Corporations and their brutal security force, the CorpSEcorps, control the more upscale compounds where science and technology and 'progress' have become the new gods, resulting in all sorts of lovely bio-engineered creatures. Like the cross between a lion and lamb..you know the whole lion lays down with the lamb idea...that looks so cute and fuzzy...until they rips your throat out. Or the pig with a human brain. Ok, there have been some problems with some of the experiments.

Outside the compounds you have the pleeblands, violent and lawless, where the cultish God's Gardeners reside yet attempt to rise above it all. Both figuratively and literary, since they live on rooftops, easier to defend, raising their gardens and preaching and planning how to survive the flood that will soon come. We learn the backstories of Toby and Ren, both at times dreadful, sad stories, both tied to the God's Gardeners, and both, in their own ways, showing us how they became survivors. Because that is what they both are, survivors. And in the later part of the book we explore, if not totally resolve, what being a survivor in this new world, this world after the Flood, may mean.

Without question, Atwood writes from a certain ideological point of view and if you have read my reviews before, you might have noticed that I hate a heavy handed, preachy novel. Especially if the views it is preaching differs from my own...lol. But happily, Atwood is a much better writer than that. Everyone, every view, to some degree, is subjected to Atwood's witty and often very amusing treatment. Because yes, this book, while often violent and even gross, is also often very funny and witty. And ultimately, she wraps it all into what I found to be a quite entertaining and compelling story. Also a story with some great characters. A well written, engaging plot, some well defined, affecting characters and the exploration of some interesting questions, all makes for a book that I totally enjoyed. She creates a disturbing and thought provoking image of a future, an image that may well remain with out after you have finished enjoying this entertaining book.

I loved Handmaid's Tale when I read it, years ago. Why did it take me so long to pick up another Atwood novel? I have no idea. I loved this one, though. I went back and read Oryx & Crake as well. I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories of this sort. This one was particularly easy to believe. When I read books like this one, I am convinced Jesus' return is still pretty far off. Because it is clear there is so much worse we can do as a human race. We are busy trying to become like God. I think He will wait until we are pretty sure we have mastered it all and then knock us to our knees. This book is a good look at where society is headed. Also, I did a lot of highlighting. The theology of God's Gardners interested me. They gave me some new ways to look at Bible stories I thought I knew by heart. My husband and I actually pulled out the Bible and looked up some of their references and had some really deep conversations. Love that.

In The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, the world has gone bad: the rich live as in castle towns while the poor eke out their livings in more-or-less lawless ghettos called “pleeblands,” which are run by street gangs, “pleebmobs,” controlled by the CorpSeCorp corporation which also owns the police. The corruption in government seems inextricable, and the violations of ethics are wholesale gruesome. For example, HelthWyzer purposely infects the poor with genetically designed illnesses, then profits from selling them the cures. In a world without accountability for big-enough businesses even for crimes as egregious as this, who cares about environmentalist concerns?

I am struck by the implicit relationship between Atwood’s fictional, oligarchic, feudal society and our real, modern trend toward less regulated, more out-of-control, more oppressively big business and wider gaps between rich and poor. It’s as if she is challenging our perspective, prompting us to take a wider, longer view—to consider how our day-to-day lives, our values and priorities, and our most fundamental beliefs might be affected by the onset of such a dreadful dystopia.

Atwood supposes that people who live deliberate, conservationist lifestyles will likely be seen as outsiders. In The Year of the Flood, they’ve assemble into persecuted cults, e.g. the militant Wolf Isaiahist or the pacifist God’s Gardeners. The book follows the God’s Gardeners, who are a bunch of hippies on Jesus, basically, who count prominent scientists among the saints for their secular contributions to humanity. Their point of view is relayed through three narrators.

The youngest (and most fun, in my opinion) is Ren, who tells her story of move-around adolescent rebellion in the first person voice.

Toby is callused, stern, and unapproachable, an unwilling matriarch; true to character, her story of willful resistance is told in the third person.

The third and least frequent narrator is the spiritual leader of the Gardeners, Adam One. Through his sermonizing, Atwood manages to conflate Christianity, science, and socio-economic commentary into a worldview that is surprisingly cohesive—surprisingly especially because it is incomplete, as revealed by the unresolved debates over matters of doctrine and faith at the councils of Adams and Eves. It makes me wonder, are our own worldviews any more cohesive? What am I forgetting when I inform and adjust my own outlook upon the world? What don’t I know? What do I take for granted? And also, why does it always sound silly, eccentric, or insane to attempt a new, holistic worldview? Did we evolve as spiritual animals, like Adam One says, or as materialistic brutes who are naturally inclined to bully and discredit the peaceful, spiritual thinkers amongst us, like Zeb seems to believe? “Wherever there’s nature, there’s [jerks],” he says (186). Either way, or both, we can be sure that we are struggling. This existential struggle is what, I believe, Atwood is trying to evoke. She gets it.

The book is chopped up into sections, oddly—by theme, by time? (Years pass)—and each section is introduced by a sermon from Adam One paired with a weird hymn. It does cohere, but not right away. The structure makes the book off-putting early on, but ultimately works to convey a wider perspective, a range of viewpoints, all rich with Atwood’s unique insights into people, society, and religion.

So playfully presented, the plot is almost undetectable until well into the story, but the characters are so sympathetic, the book is gripping nonetheless. I would recommend The Year of the Flood to all readers over age 15, just for the experience of such a wild book, though it’s too full of peroration (blunt, however artful) to ever be a favorite of mine, personally. It is a vast, ludicrous, character-driven, good novel, which raises questions worth asking.

The Year of the Flood was my book club read for this month and I was quite excited to start it. I haven't read any Margaret Atwood before, but The Handmaid's Tale has been on my to read list forever so I was curious to see what her books were like. Well I started this book and just kept thinking why am I reading this? Where is this going? Is there a point? It just seemed to go on and on and not really cover much of anything. Then I got to the end and thought oh, okay, this was a waste of my time. Some spoilers ahead even though not much seems to happen in the book.

So I started reading The Year of the Flood and at first I was really enjoying it. I like the idea of combining religion and science more. The problem was that then nothing really came of the interesting things I liked in the first part. There were lines I highlighted, things that I thought oh that is interesting, but then it didn't really go anywhere. Like one line here and there of something interesting peppered into the story. I was hoping there would have been more about the religion, or more of the peoples thoughts about it and stuff. Like Toby wasn't sure she really believed, but her thoughts never really seemed to be realistic for someone questioning the faith. It was just oh I don't believe, but no why or really thought about it more than oh, no. I just wanted more. I wanted some discussion on these ideas that were brought up instead of this simplistic not realistic to me story.

So most of the story is flashbacks of what happened before and just after the waterless flood. Interspersed were present day and Toby and Ren by themselves. The before parts as I said were interesting at first, but quickly became tedious. I just couldn't see where it was going, what the end story would be. What am I leading up to here with this story? Someone in book club said this was just about these non special people who don't really do much extraordinary and just kind of exist and that is why they liked it. Well me? That is not really a story I want to read. Or it would have to be written in a different way for me to really enjoy it. Like I wouldn't want to read a story of my life. It would be boring. And that is what this story was for me.

So then we finally get going with the present storyline and people meeting up again and it just fell apart even more for me. So this waterless flood killed most people, except anyone Toby knew. Somehow the only people to survive were the people in the religious group, and all of them survived. It was just odd that no one else in the area did, but everyone in their group did.

Then there was Blanco and the strange caricature of a bad guy he was. He didn't feel real as a bad guy, and the whole ending with him and Toby was just strange. It didn't make sense Toby's reactions to it. Ugh. I guess one of the big problems with the book was that I didn't really care about any of the characters or connected with them. I just kept reading thinking okay...it was just not that good. I didn't realize it was written so recently either. Someone brought it up in book club and I was shocked. Really if you would have asked me I would have said it was written in the early 80's. The technology doesn't even seem to be up to date with when it was written. Really all the technology aspects just seemed so dated and not really good enough. I mean I am not really the best with computers and stuff and even I thought really? At some of it. Like how they had their secret network set up...it was strange.

So overall not the book for me. Kind of boring, no connection with the characters and it just doesn't really seem to go anywhere. Unfortunately the first book in the series is on the Rory Gilmore Challenge list so I will be reading that shortly. Who knows, maybe I will enjoy that one more (or maybe this one would have been better had I read the first one first). Hopefully it is better than this one was.

This review was originally posted to Jen in Bookland

I think Atwood has had a lot of fun writing the second book. I experienced huge satisfaction as each piece of the puzzle slotted into place and I can’t believe she didn’t plan ahead. Like all good spec fiction this world is a slight push forward from now. The handmaid did it one way, now the Oryx and Crake books take it another.

Imagine; this is what can happen. Atwood understands and tries to entertain us with serious consequences to our own planet. Read between the lines. Actually you don’t have to read between the lines it is all out there in black and white.

Atwood has done it again! I cannot imagine any Oryx and Crakefan will be disappointed with this book, but if you've not read Oryx and Crake definitely read it first. (And if you can re-read O and C before reading this book, all the better!)

Filled with Atwoods brilliant satire (taking on religion, human excess and the "green" movement), I don't think it's a spoiler to say, The Year of the Flood takes us back to the world of O and C with sort of a parallel tale. Focus on a group of fanatics called Gardener's reminded me a bit of Handmaid's Tale. Atwood is brilliant in creating her own religions.

There's more I'd like to say, but too much opportunity for a spoiler. I had no idea this book was even in the works, so it was a totally unexpected surprise. One I'm thrilled with!

Again, Margaret Atwood makes us squirm at the very possible, very credible results of humankind's folly. Starting with a desecrated, yet recognizable, landscape, it covers 25 years through shortly after the mass death referenced in the prophetic title. Through the eyes of Toby, Ren and Amanda, women with connected histories, we view how we can arrive at the final destruction of society as we know it. When these narrators take us back to the years before the Flood, enough of the environs are familiar that we readily recognize the very bad things that are happening in the dystopia that Atwood erects. Leading up to - and enabling - the Flood is the perfect storm of mismanaged institutions and technology. Mega corporations have replaced representative governments and become so entwined in organized criminal enterprises that there is no distinction between them. Children are orphaned by the State or abandoned by their mothers (Lucerne is a real piece of work). Hubris and greed have led to the extinction of species and their replacement with new, man-manufactured genetic combinations. Flowers with faces. Pigs with human brains. Carnivorous lion-lamb combinations. Atwood's imagination has no limit; yet, because she takes today's scientific accomplishments a few steps further, the reader never has to suspend disbelief.

To make good fiction work, there has to be a good guy and the God's Gardeners are that "good guy." The best part of this great book is how Atwood allows faith and spiritual good to triumph through God's Gardeners. The Gardeners are a religious group that seems to embrace several theologies with an emphasis on Christian doctrine. When first introduced, the reader may think, here's another dictatorial, chauvinist cult that grabs up the desperate and forces immediate conversion. Not so. Neither are they namby-pamby, accept-everything-written and turn-the-other-cheek. They question the Word (from where did God get the animal skin to clothe Adam and Eve?), teach weapon-wielding, meat-chewing survival skills (that are much needed and used before and after the Flood), and bestow sainthood on a host of historical crusaders for social justice and earth-life protection. (Editing miss: While the Gardeners surely would have bestowed sainthood on both women, Harriet Tubman was the intended blessed Wayfarer, not "Saint" Sojourner Truth.)

Situations can shift quickly from the subtle to the graphic, even gory; yet, Atwood's delivery is never gratuitous. Taking in these scenes are like viewing the aftermath of a battle - or the plague: we don't want to repeat it, we want to turn back the clock to avoid its happening.

Margaret Atwood's new novel, The Year of the Flood, does something that I can't recall her doing before: she reprises characters from a previous novel, and expands their story. Several of the characters from Oryx & Crake, (which I also rated with four stars in 2003), appear in the new novel, and the two novels merge pleasantly to create a more complete view of a future possible world. The Year of the Flood is a story of survival in a world devastated by genetic experiments gone foul, and a plague that wiped out much of the population. One group in The Year of the Flood is called God's Gardeners, and the hymns that Atwood creates describe their beliefs and their world with humor and insight. A collaborator composed music for these fourteen hymns and they can be heard and purchased [...]. Atwood's writing is superb, the characters believable, and the future world she creates is a scary place.

Rating: Four-star (Highly Recommended)

** spoiler alert ** The Year of The Flood presents itself as an adventure novel set in the apocalyptic world Ms. Atwood first created in Oryx and Crake. But the true core of the novel is the story of the creation of a new religion and its founder, Adam One. It's a wonderful religion, with a theology that stresses recycling, gardening, talking to bees, and a vegan diet; whose saints include Dian Fossey, Rachel Carson, and E.O. Wilson; that prays for love to shine upon and restore the oceanic dead zones and dying coral reefs. I'd convert in a minute if I wasn't so allergic to the G*D word, which brings to my mind the image of a vengeful Old Testament God who strongly resembles Saddam Hussein.
The more I thought about the The Year of The Flood, the more it resembled the New Testament story of the founder of a kinder gentler religion and his disciples who were persecuted by the government for their subversive views. So I went back and reread Oryx and Crake to see if it had Old Testament elements, and sure enough, it turns out to be the story of Crake, a brilliant angry vengeful teenage boy who gene-splices a new improved race into existence and does his best to destroy the old human world. Of course Crake accidentally becomes the god of this new race and his best friend Jimmy, who tells Crake's story, is his unwilling prophet.
Together these novels are a brilliant, amusing, despairing, and loving look at the foibles of humanity. If I doubted Ms. Atwood's genius before I read them, I don't now. She's using all her considerable wit to persuade us to alter our way of life and I hope she succeeds.

I absolutely loved this book!! And this is coming from someone who hated Oryx and Crake in almost equal measure. But for some reason this book worked for me where Oryx and Crake failed miserably.

The story follows the lives of Toby, the manager of a spa, and Ren a sex worker at an upscale sex club at the dawn of the end of world as they know it. Both women had at one time been adherents of a green cult called the Gardeners with the charismatic Adam One as its leader. The running philosophy of this group was a jumble of Christian beliefs mixed in with a vegan lifestyle and an abhorroence of the corrupt corporate mentality. Though neither woman is really a hard core member believer of the goings on in the group, they each form an attachment to it for a variety of reasons.

One of the main beliefs of the group was always that the earth was going to be destroyed in the coming future. Adam One has been preaching for years that a waterless flood was imminent, one that would wipe out all who are unprepared and he urges his followers to be physically, mentally and materially ready. Everyone is told to build their own "Ararat" where they store up all they will need when the world collapses. But Adam One's preaching is of course not much different from many such movements. But unlike many such prophets, he turns out to be right. The world does indeed get overtaken by a wave of disease in the form of a virulent virus that wipes out most of the population.

By the time of the virus is wiping out the population both women have now been away from the Gardeners for sometime. But each gets saved from the virus by different coincidences. Each recognizes the epidemic once it breaks out and remembers the words of their leader. They each try to figure out survival while at the same time trying to save themselves from hunger, loneliness and when they do finally realize that they are not the only ones alive, how to survive those who are using this disaster to their advantage.

I throughly enjoyed this book and to be honest I was not expecting that reaction. Having just read Oryx and Crake which I was less than impressed with, I was reading this out of duty seeing as I had to provide a review for the free book received than any anticipated enjoyment. Whereas in Oryx and Crake I felt that too much of an emphasis was placed on the outlandish, here the characters were beautifully sketched out and I was fully invested in their well being. As each chapter progresses and you learn about the characters and their past, you empathize and want things to turn out well for them despite the confines of their world. A world where technology reigns supreme and the rich are able to seclude themselves in compounds guarded by a brutal police force. It is a depressingly real place and one where dissenters are quickly silenced in "accidents". Unfortunately, the world outside those walls of the rich is just as bad. Lawlessness reigns supreme, chaos is a way of life and everyone is stealing from one another and high on something or another. This is the world that the mad genius of Oryx and Crake seeks to remove. I do wonder if one has not read the aforementioned that they would be able to understand certain things/references that are made in this book. Characters from Oryx and Crake populate the background of this book and it explains their actions in the previous book.

I enjoyed this book immensely and would highly recommend it.

The Year of the Flood is unlike anything I had ever read before.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'll get to that. Bear with me.

Before starting my blog, Alison's Book Marks, I thought I was a well-read individual. I was an English Major! Then, I became introduced to writers like Richard Russo, Valerie Martin and Margaret Atwood. I had not read Janet Evanovich or James Patterson prior to July 2009 either!

When picking up a book by a well-known writer, there is a certain amount of pressure for a reviewer. I WANT to love this book, because I'm SUPPOSED to love this book. What if I don't? Does that mean I don't get it? Could it mean that it's over my head? Does that mean I had better take up blogging about photography?

I was panicking during the first 100 pages of Margaret Atwood's new book, which was being praised as a masterpiece before it was even released. What is this? Is it science fiction? Is this an alternate universe? What is dystopian literature anyway? Was Atwood high when she wrote this book? Should I be high while reading this book? What the hell is a "violet biolet"? I took a deep breath, put my note cards down, and just let myself fall into this book. Once I did that, I really enjoyed it.

One thing I figured out is even though The Year of the Flood is not the second book of a series, there are characters who make an appearance from her earlier work, Oryx and Crake, which took place in a section of the world in which The Year of the Flood is set. I am told, if you have already read and enjoyed Oryx and Crake, you'll love The Year of the Flood.

For those of you who, like me, have not read Oryx and Crake, this book was a mind freak. There were so many layers to this book, I could write a dissertation if I had the space. I am new to dystopian literature, and it was a fascinating introduction.

The actual Year of the "waterless flood" is Year 25. Our two main characters are Ren, who is the narrator of her chapters, and Toby, whose story is told from the 3rd person. Atwood not only flips back and forth between these two characters' perspectives, she also takes her readers between Year 25 and the years leading up to Year 25. Eventually, the stories of the two women, and the world they are in, are intertwined and the full story comes together.

The method in which the story is written was masterful, but the actual story is what I found so compelling. It's not that far off from what could actually happen in our world. There is a "waterless flood" or massive epidemic that kills off most of the population. Whether or not the epidemic was created in a lab is unknown, but assumed. Even if the epidemic was not intentional, certain illnesses were purposefully given to test subjects who had thought they were taking vitamin supplements. (Just a thought like that could make a person a little paranoid in the year 2009.) Within this story is a cult of sorts, God's Gardeners, which believes in a pure way of life, not using too much energy, eating only from the earth and not from the Corporation's labs and they somehow survive. Years and years earlier, they would have been considered a part of the "green" movement. Since the majority of the early world had ignored that green movement, the world they are left with is polluted, society is collapsing on itself, and many of the animal species are extinct.

Makes you think.

So, The Year of the Flood was unlike anything I had ever read before. Good or bad? I think I have to fall on the side of good. Really good. This was a cool book, I am thrilled to have been introduced to another amazing writer. It's never too late, and you're never too far out of the loop as a reader to try out a new writer or a new genre.

One more thing: A "violet biolet" is the futuristic term for a toilet.

Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood is set in the same world as her earlier novel Oryx and Crake. Like Oryx and her much 1980's dystopia The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood extrapolates from modern scientific and cultural/social trends to depict a horrifying future. Here we have corporate control (HelthWyzer Corporation), genetic manipulation (one example: the libam -- half lion, half lamb), heavily secure compounds for the well-to-do (the future's "gated" communities), jobs schlepping "burgers" for the less-well-to-do at Secretburgers (with a nod to Soylent Green) or doing "plank work" at SeksMart (say it out loud) or Scales and Tails. The even worse-well-to-do end up disappeared (check those burgers) and criminals are thrown into the Paintball Prison--a combination of incarceration and reality TV. Various religious sects preach their dogma, including a group of vegetarian pacifists known as The Gardeners, who predict the coming "Waterless Flood," which comes in the form of an amazing quick and virulent plague, wiping out much of humanity.
The book opens post-plague with two survivors, both former Gardeners: Ren, who was locked into a secure room at Scales and Tails and so avoided contamination; and Toby, at the AnooYou spa. The book then alternates between real time and flashbacks showing us how the two ended up where they are, using first person for one character and third for the other. Between such chapters we also get sermons from the leader of the Gardeners (Adam One) and Gardener hymns. Along the way, we meet a host of other characters, including the two that would eventually become Oryx and Crake of the earlier book (the events of the two books eventually dovetail to some extent).
This is typical Atwood, which means it all (or near enough all) pretty much just works, seemingly effortlessly. You begin to inhabit this world very early on, nodding your head as you're introduced to yet another reasonable trend forward from our time--it's all fully realized and concrete. The same holds true for the characters as Atwood shifts from one to the other without missing a beat, capturing the inner voice of a young girl or the more confident voice of a group leader with equal sure-footedness, and showing the changes in characters over time in her usual subtle fashion.
The plot is compelling from the start thanks to the use of the split chronology; simply telling it in linear fashion would have necessitated too much intro as the society was explained. This way we get both the world building and the tension of how/if Ren and Toby, two very different personas--one tough, the other gentle-- will survive. Atwood also throws in other tension pre-plague: a viciously violent former boss out for Toby's blood, concern over the Gardener's more illicit activities, and so on. The tension throughout is leavened by humor--sometimes overt, sometimes wry--and the warm relationships among several characters, especially the women.
A gripping story that becomes more so as the book moves on, compelling characters, serious thematic content, a wonderfully inventive not-so-far-flung future--it's all here in The Year of The Flood, one of the my favorite books by one of my favorite authors. Highly recommended.

I actually picked up Year of the Flood around a year before touching Oryx and Crake.

I read some older Atwood in grade school, and didn't appreciate it until I picked it up again in university. This novel, detailing the events after the Year of the Flood (and before, as the narratives tied together) was downright incredible. Blazed through it in a single day on the beach - Atwood creates a chilling yet realistic view of the near future, hand in hand with the coming apocalypse - should we fail to change our ways.

Absolutely loved her writing, her style, and the thematic issues addressed therein.

One slight drawback - some characters can be a little hard to identify with at times, but in the end it all works out.

All in all, a 5/5.

Margaret Atwood's imagination never ceases to amaze me! I enjoyed this book immensely, even if it isn't the prettiest of future scenarios. Once you step into her world, you'll be both disturbed and entertained. Unfortunately, some of her scenarios aren't too far-fetched. A corporate-run world? (Aren't we already on that path?) Strange genetically modified animals? (The genetic genie is already 'out of the bottle'. Who knows what happens in dark laboratories beyond the public eye.) Glow-in-the-dark roses? (Just look up 'bioluminescent plants'--they exist.) The positive takeaway from the book comes from The God's Gardeners, a group of environmental surivalists. Nurture the earth and it's creatures, and you'll be nurtured back. If more people had that mindset, we'd be looking at a more utopian future rather than possibilities of a harsh dystopian world. Come into Margaret's world...you won't put this book down.

I disliked Margaret Atwood's previous novel, Oryx and Crake, as I found it to be not fleshed-out or plausible. It didn't help that the characters were bland, boring and vague as well.

However, The Year of the Flood makes up for much of the previous novel's mistakes. For one thing, the world of this novel (the same as in Oryx and Crake), a dystopian future of have and have-nots whose lives are controlled by private corporations, is much more detailed. I still think it's an unbelievable world, but at least it's comprehensive this time around, if still not plausible.

Best of all, Atwood focuses on character development and creates vivid portraits of people living at the edge of society. In The Year of the Flood I believed in the characters and invested myself in watching them develop and grow over time. They seem like real people (unlike in Oryx and Crake). Particularly well-drawn characters include Toby, Zeb and Amanda.

Atwood's description of how the God's Gardeners cult lives and works is truly fascinating. It's a highly detailed depiction, exploring their organizational hierarchy and the individual tasks and methods they have of managing to survive (and subvert) in a world that hates them.

Atwood also doesn't disrespect her characters this time around. While the God's Gardeners might be a vegetarian hippie eco-cult, they are savvy, multi-faceted, compassionate and occasionally cruel. In other words, they're real people who believe in a gentle way of life, even though the world around them conspires to destroy them. They usually persevere, but sometimes their human side leads them to fail, and people get hurt or killed.

When the novel isn't focusing on the Gardeners and their organization, the story loses some appeal and becomes predictable and silly. It's never quite believable that in the post-apocalypse world all of the main characters somehow manage to survive and find each other, for example. The ending of the novel, too, feels rushed and ridiculous, as if Atwood decided to take some shortcuts so she wouldn't have to write more than she had to.

On a whole, this is a decent novel and worth reading. While it helps if you've read Oryx and Crake beforehand, I don't think it's a necessity; The Year of the Flood can stand on its own and is a far superior book, in any case.

I loved the earlier companion book, Oryx and Crake (O&C), which is one of my favorite science fiction novels and a work that continues to make me think about current technology and economic trends continuing into the future. But this book is a paradox to me. I both loved reading it (it reads quickly and easily) but was disappointed by it (I didn't have any more interesting thoughts about this world than I'd already had after reading O&C). While it is an interesting read, it just doesn't add much to the earlier book's techno-fuelled, morality-challenged apocolyptic world.

I had the odd sense reading this that Atwood was channelling Stephen King, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if all you want to do is enjoy a well-written book that is fun to read. Her character types, the use of religion and music throughout the book, the too convenient coincidences used to move the plot along & tie up loose ends, as well as the rather claustrophic current time setting for the two women (one holed up in a spa, the other in a sex club) whose lives are chronicled over a period of about 15 years made me feel at many points like I was reading a very good Stephen King novel.

While it is just possible to read this book by itself, the reader will be so much better off reading O&C first. Without the first book so much of the final third becomes hard to decipher. Atwood does a much better job of describing the wider universe in O&C. Here one essentially gets a much more limited perspective, from that of an ecological religious sect preparting to survive the approaching disaster. Atwood's purpose seems to be to show how at least one group of humans, as opposed to just a few survivors here and there, can survive the disaster that should kill nearly everyone.

What was most disappointing is that this book essentially ends at the same point as O&C, in the same place, time, and with the same people. Why have two books that end in the same point, and a most ambiguous one at that? Makes me wonder why a trilogy, when two books might work equally well to tell her planned story? I pray that the reported third book in the trilogy advances the story into the future of the fallen world, helping us to see the outcome for both the original humans and their "planned" genetically-manipulated successors.

I'm very glad I finally read this book. I waited years because I loved the first and was afraid the second wouldn't be nearly as good. Now I can't wait for the third.

Margaret Atwood is renowned for her "novel within an novel" concept in The Blind Assassin. This time, it's 1 novel, 2 books.
I'd love to know if she had the outline for The Year Of The Flood when she wrote Oryx and Crake or if she squeezed this novel into the existing storyline of Oryx and Crake at a later date. Although it's been a number of years since I've read Oryx and Crake, and I probably missed some of the linkages, it's fascinating how she was able to weave the two stories together.

This is a very violent and disturbing piece of work, and I found myself peering at the picture of a 70 year old woman, looking like a nice grandmother on the back sleeve, and wondering, how on earth did she come up with this? It's certainly not for the faint of heart.

Overall, I'm wowed with her skill as an author. She takes you out of your world and totally immerses you in hers; and what a world she can imagine! Gang rape, torture, collecting maggots from the decaying remains of a Pigoon! Her commentary on our world is brilliant, and I'm particularly partial to her corporate names: Anooyoo, HappiCuppa, HelthWyzer et al.

That being said, I don't know if I enjoyed this book as much as Oryx and Crake. It's a superbly crafted work and her writing is second to none, but Oryx and Crake is a masterpiece and in my opinion, is her finest work.

This was one of the best novels I read this past decade: compelling, imaginative, weighty, and fully realized. Atwood grabs hold of our sorry present and gives it a few twists to show what kind of future it would lead to: one of complete social collapse, technology run amok, and humans increasingly reduced to biology. And that's before the apocalypse. ORYX AND CRAKE showed us how the rivalry between two men got humanity to the point of almost total self-destruction; YEAR OF THE FLOOD is less epic but more nuanced, as it focuses on two very ordinary women who live outside the world of powerful scientific corporations. The two heroines are involved with a messianic, renegade back-to-the-land movement and then live in the armpits of the economy, working in a spa and a strip club. So what would you do if you were in a spa or strip club when pretty much everyone else in your immediate surroundings died? And how will the world look if the only survivors left to rebuild it are romantic, self-involved teenagers and hardened criminals?

The future is a scary place, with police officers allowed to run rampant over people's rights, corruption everywhere, and corporations that use humans as guinea pigs while pretending to help them. Some people are on the inside, in luxury secure communities funded by genetic engineering companies, and some are left on the outside scraping to get by and eating mystery burgers that may contain human remains. A third group chooses a different path.

God's Gardeners is a minimalist religion. Its members wear drab clothing, recycle everything, and focus on growing, preserving, and stockpiling food. They eschew technology and innovation, and their leader preaches about a waterless flood that will claim all of humanity.

God's Gardeners are not so shocked when suddenly the vast majority of all humanity dies a terrible death. However, being free of the corrupting forces that once considered Earth their plaything isn't entirely without danger. Ren and Toby, two women who have survived the waterless flood in isolation, find themselves fighting for their lives in this desolate yet terrifying landscape. It is hard to know if it is safe to emerge from hiding, when the infection might still linger and genetically engineered predators lurk. It is hard to think about other survivors, but even harder to think there might not be anyone else.

This is a fascinating companion book to "Oryx and Crake," and I really enjoyed reading another side of the same story. The characters are compelling, and their situation is horrifying. I couldn't stop reading this book.

This story runs concurrently with "Oryx and Crake". Again, Atwood focuses on 2 main characters, alternating viewpoints. These two women were part of God's Gardeners, a religious group focused on the environment. The book starts with each of them alone, surviving precariously after the Waterless Flood (pandemic). Through the retelling of their past, we get caught up to the now (with more and more frequent glimpses of characters from Oryx & Crake) and their reunion/saving of each other (and a couple of other folks).

As always, Atwood's writing is intelligent, smooth, and thought-provoking. I felt this book had more overt humor than Oryx and Crake did and getting to know more about the God's Gardeners was interesting. I anxiously await the third installment.

First off, this is my first Atwood. So, forgive me while I gush. I listened to this audiobook without reading any reviews first, so in some ways, I went into the experience "blinded". In the beginning, tt was hard to get hooked on the book - but as the picture of the Atwood's world took shape, I was fascinated. As an audiobook, this is REALLY nicely done - Adam One's singing takes bizarre to a whole new level!

Atwood's dystopian vision is deeply unsettling. In painting a picture of this alternative reality, she made me re-examine the world I live in, and question what "normal" means. Insightful and imaginative, Atwood hits just the right balance between intellectually stimulating and emotionally unsettling, and is a great addition to anyone's reading repertoire.

This book was so bad I couldn't even finish it. I don't usually leave bad reviews but it was just so bad that I have to. Don't waste your time reading it. It is a complete waste of time and you will regret it. The characters were all pathetic. All of the evil corporations and their names were unrealistic and poorly thought up. The story line was silly. I listened to the audio book and they had some awful songs in it. It was just all so bad. I can't believe a publisher actually published it.

Year of the Flood is a fascinating book, in that Atwood has, again, created a dystopia that is could very well become a reality someday if certain trends continue i.e. use of private security rather than public, genetic splicing with minimal controls and for the purpose of profit, and on and on. This is a cautionary tale that shows us what we could become if we don't watch out. And it really works in that way....I finished the book feeling, "I'm so glad things have not gotten so bad yet. There's still time. I've got to do something" Like The Handmaid's Tale (Everyman's Library)this is a lonely book but the existence of the "radical cult" God's Gardeners provides a counterpoint...the Gardeners uphold high spiritual ideals even amidst all the decadence, injustice, destruction, and general mayhem. I found it comforting that each chapter began with the words to one of the God's Gardener hymns, and, by the way, what a great product of Ms. Atwood's imagination, to have created a whole new religion that, no doubt, many readers will find preferable to the religions that are now available. I was also glad there was a wise man in the book, Adam One, who is the head of the Gardeners. I give the book four stars because it touched me but didn't touch me as deeply as only novels, albeit great ones that have withstood the test of time. But I did find myself haunted by the book for at least a week, esp. the last few chapters which I feel are particularly poignant and beautiful--not to mention highly imaginative. A book worth reading and thinking about.

I'd never heard of Margaret Atwood, I only bought Oryx and Crake when the store recommended it based on my interest in post-apocalyptic stories. Oryx and Crake quickly became one of my favorite books of all time and I reread it once a year or so. The cliffhanger ending was a bit disappointing, so you can imagine my excitement when I found out there was a sequel. (Side-quel?) Unfortunately, the story was a letdown from start to finish. The two protagonists, Toby and Ren actually do very little except recount their lives growing up in the pleeblands as part of the God's Gardeners. Both recounts are fairly boring as neither woman really does anything more than tell about the chores she did and how they didn't fully believe in the Gardener's faith. Interspersed with the retellings are boring sermons from the leader of the Gardeners about "Nature good, people bad". It's difficult to care about any of the characters because none of them do anything or really stand out in any way. And its nearly as bad as the new Star Wars movies for trying to squeeze all the characters from the original into the next story. Most irritating of all (for me at least) is that instead of resolving the ending of Oryx and Crake, it just postponed it with a different, less interesting cliffhanger. The Year of The Flood feels a lot like a half-hearted sequel tacked on to a successful first effort to keep the publisher happy with a new book.

This book was a wonderful surprise! I had read Oryx and Crake multiple times and was left wanting me after the ending. This book is not a sequel, but rather covers the same period of time but from the point of views of different characters in a totally different situation. I didn't know that when I picked it up, and when I realized that is what it was, I was thrilled. It is not necessary to have read O&C to enjoy this one, nor is it necessary to read one before the other. I don't think I have ever ran into this kind of story-telling, and it was a very satisfying experience. Like O&C, there are some racy (raunchy) parts and language I could have done without, but the dystopian story captured my imagination.

Book 1 - Oryx and Crake. A brilliant tale of the end of the world as we know it. The reader picks up clues of the event from a straggling survivor "Snowman" who lives in apparent isolation with a new race of humans. The story of HOW the world ended and HOW these "new humans" came to be is riveting and plausible. 5/5 stars.

Book 2 - Year of the Floor. REWIND. The story is re-told from a different perspective. The plot somewhat redundant, it tracks a group of "God's Gardners" trying to save the world. Storylines intersect enough with Book 1 to make it interesting, but when you stop to think about it - nothing really happens, the whole thing was (boring) back story. The book ends with the end of the world (again) and the survivors finding a way to survive. 3/5 stars.

Book 3 - MaddAddam. RE-REWIND. The entire book revolves around the survivors and "new-humans" just hanging out and living together. There is no plot. You read about what food the survivors eat, who gets pregnant and how, more backstory (as if Book 2 wasn't enough) on some characters, how some bad survivors are killed, who gets married and why, the "new-humans" learning humans skills - but again - NOTHING HAPPENS. The book ends with the survivors just continuing to live. 1/5 stars.

Oryx and Crake ranks with Handmaid's Tale as one of the finest contemporary novels I've read. Year of the Flood is just a little below that, due to its heavy handed moral indignation. Don't misunderstand...I think that Atwood has a right to be indignant. And perhaps we need an unambiguous and strong message about now. However, as a novel the pedantic tone weakens the beauty of the telling.

I would have preferred a book that didn't share so much with Oryx and Crake. Why not build a parallel story with independent characters living through the same events? The links made the story seem a little too easy.

All that said, we all need to read the Year of the Flood and Oryx and Crake. We need to consider our future and the consequences of our lifestyles. Along with non-fiction like The Omnivores Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, plus films like An Inconvenient Truth, these books create a picture of a future that is frightening and inhumane. God's Gardeners are making ethical choices as individuals. They are not relying on government and industry to make decisions for them. With all it's dogma the movement Atwood describes may give us a clue as to how the little people can impact the direction of our future. And it certainly defines a different kind of progress. One where human nature is the focus, rather than the comforts we create around us.

Book 2 of the MaddAddam trilogy follows a familiar pattern as the first without becoming repetitive. The year of the Flood takes parallel look at the time up until the pandemic which kills nearly everyone on the planet, but the stories cross paths with those from Oryx and Crake on a couple of occasions allowing you to see familiar tales from a new angle. This book has a bit more suspense than book one and offers a harder look at the stark realities of this cruel world, setting up the story for a great end with book 3.

In this richly imagined world, corporations are in charge, not governments. And the corporations with the most power are those that cater to human desires for beauty and for control over the environment. Genetically engineered products are everywhere, tempting people to look younger, sexier, prettier. New animals, like the Mo'Hair sheep, are designed to provide beauty products (in this case, transplantable hair). People live in corporate compounds, where intelligence is for sale, individuals and families are under company surveillance, and freedom is exchanged for a shaky sense of security and well-being.

Outside the compounds, in the pleeblands, chaos reigns. Violence, poverty, and greed fill every neighborhood. The air is bad, buildings are falling down, and gangs roam the streets.

Living in this not-so-distant dystopian future is a cult known as The Gardeners. Led by a charismatic, semi-Christian character known as Adam One, The Gardeners live simply and worship such holy people as Saint Euell Gibbons, Saint E. O. Wilson, and St. Dian Fossey. Vegetarians, they eat "nothing with a face". They honor disappearing species, and they prepare for the "Waterless Flood," a disaster that they anticipate will wipe out most of life on earth.

The storyline centers on two characters. Toby, saved by The Gardeners from a brutal and abusive boss, becomes a practitioner, but reluctant believer. Ren, a teenager when we meet her, moves in and out of The Gardeners' world at the whim of her mother. When her mother leaves The Gardeners and returns to her husband in the HelthWyzer Corporation, we get to experience life inside the company compound. Neither Toby nor Ren completely believe in The Gardeners' way of life, but both rely on what they learned, when they find themselves survivors of a deadly plague.

Atwood's creation is visionary, frightening, cautionary, and darkly amusing. Those who have read Oryx and Crake will recognize some characters, as this story takes place at the same time, although from a wholly different perspective.

Highly recommended.

Having read Oryx and Crake (which gave me goosebumps), I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book. I plowed through it in a fury without being able to put it down, jeopardizing school work and sleep. It was well worth it. I've noticed some folks shooting down the book for being fragmented and hard to follow. It is fragmented, but at the same time, a page turner- I couldn't wait to finish a chapter on Ren only to read another on Toby, etc.

The plot might be hard to follow for those who haven't read Oryx and Crake prior to The Year of the Flood. It's far from being plotless, it does an excellent job of filling in all the cracks from Oryx and Crake, from the perspective of two women. Atwood does a great job of bringing this fictitious world alive, I wonder whether she'll continue with the story...

I'm rereading Oryx and Crake right now, it's been a while, and I want to see if I can pick up on details I missed the first time round- for instance, the Gardners.

In this biotech thriller, Margaret Atwood's dystopian view of the world's end contains contemporary elements of life that make the result at once familiar as well as more disquieting than usual. Telling the story from the points of view of 2 young women, isolated after a cataclysmic "waterless flood" that has all but annihilated human life, the extreme effects of societal disintegration, global warning and the consequences of biotech irresponsibility keep the reader in suspense. I found this "companion" to her Oryx and Crake be far more accessible and suspenseful to that earlier book, and eagerly look forward to a possible third installment.

At the heart of Margaret Atwood's newest novel is a "Waterless Flood"--a manmade global pandemic that couldn't be "obliterated with biotools and bleach." Like an angel of death, "it traveled through the air as if on wings, it burned through cities like fire, spreading germ-ridden mobs, terror, and butchery." Although this flood is dry, its vindictive, Biblical undertones evoke the torrential deluge of Noah's day. As it spreads, the flood transforms the world from a harsh cacophony of busy machines and concrete monoliths into a barren landscape governed by "quietness, the absence of motors." The virus causes its victims to explode in a reddish puree of blood and pulpy matter, like "ketchup," as Peggy prefers to call it. Millions are now dead, and the technological infrastructures that ran our civilization are failing. The H1N1 flu looks like a scrawny wimp next to this viral behemoth.

In The Year of the Flood, Ms. Atwood steeps readers in a severe world where a private security firm called CorpSeCorps ruthlessly lords over the now dead public sector. The world the corporation governs has been demoralized by an unrepentant consumerism, catering to the wants of a race marked by "overpopulation and wickedness." In defiance against natural order, they fiddle with genetics to concoct bizarre biological cocktails like rakunks, green rabbits, liobams, pigs with human brains, and "perfect" yet unfeeling naked humans with blue genitalia.

All is not lost though. Amidst the chaotic din, the corporation's dissenters have clustered in deliberate communities to escape the excess and waste. The group central to the novel is the God's Gardeners--a bunch of smelly, pacifist vegetarians who adhere to a quirky faith that amalgamates science and religion. In their mission to preserve the ecosystem's flora and fauna, they renounce the conventions and luxuries of modern life for homeopathic cures, itchy sackcloth outfits, and diets that revolve around a menu of soydines, beananas, mushrooms, odd legumes and weird, genetically spliced plants. From the outside, the Gardeners are regarded as "twisted fanatics who combine food extremism with bad fashion sense and a puritanical attitude towards shopping," but at least they are conscientious about their carbon footprint.

The Gardeners are led by Adam One, the kindly leader who teaches his followers "tolerance, and loving-kindness, and correct boundaries." With other numbered Adams and Eves, he establishes a green haven where everyone contributes to the community by constructing "Ararats"--storages for food and supplies in preparation for the flood. Although life there is initially hard, he eventually proselytizes those disillusioned by the outside world's artifice into the sect's honest and quasi-monastic ways. Two followers who join the Gardeners' ranks are the heroines who tell their colorful tales of survival in this post-apocalypse.

Toby, the first heroine, currently holds base in a plush, organic health spa stocked with edible beauty creams and homegrown salad vegetables. Although her story begins in the sad and barren present, she traces back twenty-five years of flashbacks that chronicle the turn of events leading to the pandemic. Her mother died unknowingly from a series of medical experiments conducted by the drug company, HelthWyzer. Her father committed suicide shortly after, leaving her with nothing as he invested their savings in her mother's medical bills. She leaves home and supports herself by taking denigrating jobs, such as working in a fast-food joint called Secret Burger--a seedy place purported to mix human parts into a nauseating salad of offal. After a violent scuffle with her boss, she unwittingly joined the God's Gardeners upon Adam One's intervention, later even becoming one of the group's elders.

Another character who lives to tell about the flood is Ren, the daughter of a woman who runs away from her loaded, yet emotionally flat husband after falling in love with a handsome and muscular Gardener hunk. The Gardeners' drab ways eventually grow on Ren, and she befriends the commune's oddball kids. When her mother, Lucerne, is later disenchanted with the hunk and his sporadic sex, she flees the commune and takes Ren back to her father's "normal" and desensitized medical compound. Lucerne sends her to school, and there she meets Jimmy the Snowman, the hero of Oryx and Crake. She dates him, they break up, and he dates her commune best friend Amanda Payne to churn out a nice dose of romantic angst. Both Toby and Ren eventually meet up during the flood's aftermath, and together they must survive to restore the human race.

While Peggy Atwood is no stranger to these dystopian fantasies, The Year of the Flood is perhaps the most accomplished among like masterpieces such as The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake. In many ways, this vividly imaginative book extrapolates on where the latter left off, not only resurrecting characters like Jimmy and Amanda, but also reviving a more panoramic version of its fallen Eden. However, the author's writing now renders a much more fluid, personable, and satirically humorous narrative exquisitely focused on the interplay between her characters. While the Gardeners' annoying hymns and their Calvinistic, ecological homilies first come off as repetitive, Atwood manages to tie in her moralistic visions gracefully without sounding like a tree-hugging bishop.

In The Year of the Flood, Ms. Atwood has written a harrowing, albeit occasionally funny novel that urges us to be more conscious about living in communion with nature and humanity. However dark in its outlook, this ultimately is a beautiful story telling of the human race's qualities of resilience and redemption as we battle to preserve a world in peril.

Margaret Atwood's science background makes The Year of the Flood a little disturbingly realistic. Like Oryx and Crake, the "sidequel" to this book, life as we know it has ceased and the survivors are trying to make do with limited food, no electricity, and questionable companionship. Toby, lean and efficient, finds refuge in "Anooyoo" spa and is hiding from too-smart pigs and mo-hairs (both spliced animal breeds of the future) who threaten her garden. Ren is broken, like her name might suggest, and the unlikely pairing of the two women along with several males is haunting and a bit too close to home. If you haven't read Oryx and Crake yet, you might want to: the Snowman makes an appearance as does Crake. Atwood bends words, time and space like they are her own. I'm excited to hear Ms. Atwood read this month; I hear that some of the the "Gardener's Hyms" may be performed. I don't want to spoil too much, but if you are a die-hard Atwood fan, you've probably read this already, and if you're not, pick up this book. Just don't think it will be happy or a stroll through the park. As Ms. Atwood has indicated, happy books depress her. Well, if the converse is true, then sad books bring joy, and this book, while sad, offers hope through unanswered questions. Oh yes, Ms. Atwood doesn't like answers either so beware....

I have always enjoyed Margaret Atwood's spec-fic; this book pairs with Oryx and Crake, and occasionally its' characters make brief cameos, but this is mostly a stand-alone story.

While I enjoyed this book, it wasn't for the reasons most people would. I always find Atwood's writing to be something like a meditation. It's got a comfortable, calm rhythm to it. The diction is amazingly believable; it's amazing how lifelike the mental conversation can be. Maybe I'm silly to think of it in that manner, but I will always appreciate that characteristic of her writing, that earthy, deliberate contemplation of existence.

However, I do have some complaints.
- First, this book was sometimes hard to follow. The narrative would skip through time periods and characters in a manner that I occasionally found incredibly frustrating; I would end up losing track and skipping back to the beginning of the chapters just to find out who and when I was reading about.
- Second, the tempo of the narrative was amazingly slow - and then when the end of the world happened, it was skimmed over in a couple of pages just to find a ponderous aftermath that did not feel anywhere near as dire as the situation demanded it to be.
- Third, I never really clicked with the characters. I think the only one who really grabbed hold of me was Toby, but I couldn't make myself care about the fates of anyone else. This is not to say that they are not fleshed out fully - if anything, the opposite is true. Atwood truly did her best to make her these environmental hippies cum end of the world religious activists seem particularly human, and this is one of her strengths. They just didn't matter much to me.
- Fourth, there were a couple of plot holes that absolutely drove me insane. I got to them, and I'd end up stopping to dwell on them to try and figure out explanations. I really felt like I'd been jerked out of the story to try and figure out her literary devices.

Atwood's writing also pairs amazingly well with that of Sheri S. Tepper's; Atwood is a master of the first person account of a disaster, Tepper that of the third person. Often, what they write about is similar and with that sort of sideways take on what is current in the world, though Tepper's are usually placed in a much more unfamiliar setting.

Would I recommend this book? Certainly, to those who truly enjoy the genre of speculative fiction. Will I be rereading it endlessly like I did A Handmaid's Tale? Probably not; while I enjoyed it, it's not compelling enough to want to revisit.

I listened to the audiobook of "Year of the Flood", and was not impressed either by the book or by the reading of it.

"The Year of the Flood" is essentially a sequel to "Oryx and Crake," which I have not read. It was only after reading other reviews on the store that I realized why "The Year of the Flood" seemed so incomplete: it takes place in the margins of another story. After reading the reviews of the prior novel, I realized that minor characters who get too much screen time in "Year of the Flood" are cameos from "Oryx and Crake." Meaningless plot details are insertions from the other book. Seemingly improbable coincidences serve to tie the two books together. In a vast and faceless future dystopia, the major players in the story are all drawn from within the same community of several dozen members and associates of a fringe religious group. One man destroys the world, creates a new race of people and, coincidentally, his friends and acquaintances are the only ones who survive? It's implausible, and unnecessarily limiting.

I also find myself disliking the story's reduction of human relationships to "trade". The total commodification of sex in her dystopian future is also implausible; there isn't a single example of a romantic relationship based on affection. Even friendships in this world are motivated by some intersection of manipulation and naivete. The female characters are portrayed as weak (Ren), or selfishly deceptive (Toby). The two point-of-view characters are never able to recognize one another's strengths and weaknesses enough to form a true partnership. Toby never recognizes Ren's loyalty to Amanda as a source of strength, and Ren never sees past her image of Toby as the devout "Eve 6" to recognize the deep pragmatism of her supposed faith. Both women have remarkable strengths, but are portrayed in an extremely unflattering light-- both by each other and by the author.

I suspect there is supposed to be a parable or a metaphor, here, but I either didn't understand or don't appreciate it.

The reading of the audiobook didn't help. The women's voices, while pleasant, drew attention to the powerlessness of their characters, and undermined any efforts to make them seem competant or sympathetic. The male reader, who spoke the sermons of "Adam 1" seemed pompous and a little silly. That was likely intentional, but was a contrast with the character that emerges elsehwere in the book. Many listeners seem to have liked the recorded hymns; I found them distracting. The highly produced Christian-folk-rock style didn't match the Gardeners' theology or lifestyle. A drum machine and electric guitar on a rooftop garden? And the style didn't change even after the "Flood," when the Gardeners are on the run with nothing but the clothes on their backs. A children's chorus with tamborines and a djembe would have been more appropriate.

I might have gotten more out of this book if I had read "Oryx and Crake" first; most readers seem to consider it a better novel. But, unfortunately, on the strength of "The Year of the Flood", I'm not inspired to go back and read the earlier book.

This was my first Atwood novel. I stumbled across the book on CD at the library and took it on an solo road trip. I have never before read a book of this genre and was skeptical for the first 20 minutes of the reading but then I became hooked. Atwood's writing style was beautiful and her choice of words felt so deliberate and thoughtful, plus I greatly enjoyed the sound of the 3 voices chosen to read the novel (Toby, Ren, and Adam1). I returned home from my road trip before finishing the CDs and found myself desperate to get back in my car to run errands just so I could listen and see what happens next. I enjoyed this so much that I immediately borrowed the book on CD of The Handmaid's Tale from my library and started that today.

I have mixed feelings about this book. It was really close to being one of my favorites and my criticisms are pretty much superficial and frivolous. The book wasn't quite as entertaining to me as The Blind Assassin: A Novel, but it's much more relevant. Atwood sketches a reality that is stark but inhabited by a variety of characters who's textures weave an emotional tapestry that provides a prophetic glimpse at a possible future. Some characters' efforts to cope endear the reader while others lose themselves or become twisted under the strain of dwindling personal freedom and control. The future appears degenerate as political and biological diversity collapse and incoherent as these morph in the aftermath of a global pan-demic.

This book shares elements I liked with We (Modern Library Classics) and The Children of Men.

Completely unrelated to this book, I find Margaret Atwood as disingenuous as she is absurd when she claims that this book is not science fiction.

Two women, separately isolated, watch as a gene-engineered plague wipes out humanity in a stand-alone novel set in the dystopian world Atwood created in 2003's Oryx and Crake.

Both women - Ren and Toby - are former members of a vegan, pacifist eco-cult who long predicted the "waterless flood" which destroys humanity.

Ren came to God's Gardeners as a child, brought by her pouty, high-maintenance mother, Lucerne. Lucerne's abandonment of her gated suburb and bland husband for a life of Saints' days (St. Euell Gibbons, St. Farley Mowat of the Wolves) sack-dresses and soyberries, never quite convinces despite the manly, taciturn hunkiness of Zeb, a lover with a past.

Toby came as an adult, rescued from the doom of sex-slavery to her boss at SecretBurgers (ingredients rumored but never revealed!). Bright, middle class Toby's future had crumbled with her mother's mysterious illness, mounting bills, and her father's ruin and subsequent death. Inheritor of debt, Toby could only shed her identity and join the other dropouts and rejects at the bottom whose non-official lives are brutal, vicious and brief.

The story shifts back and forth in time from its vantage point of the plague year. Toby, holed up at a fancy spa, calls on her survival skills - from journeying to her father's grave to recover an outlawed rifle, to protecting her garden from gene-enhanced pigs. Ren, locked in the quarantine wing of a high-end sex club, watches her coworkers die of violence and plague and waits for rescue while her food dwindles.

Both women pass the time remembering the past, particularly their days with God's Gardeners - an oasis of gentleness in a world shaped by cynicism, greed and violence, not that the Gardeners simply sit by, stockpiling food, encouraging self-sufficiency and waiting for apocalypse.

Atwood creates a character-driven page-turner replete with details that make her entirely privatized world come to life. Ren in her drab clothes, envying the slum kids their bright trinkets and colorful fashions, the Painball prison where the last left standing are released back onto the streets, the Mo'Hair sheep, the Liobams (lion and lamb), the eyecolor injections that go painfully awry.

Fans of Oryx and Crake will love this; those who haven't read the earlier book will want to (there's no reason to read them in order). Many writers conjure up prophetic dystopian visions but few do it with Atwood's humor, imagination and brilliance.

Atwood has built a trilogy around apocalypse and bio-engineering gone wrong. Flood suffers from the same issues as all transitional volumes in s series do: she's set up a world, she has a destination in mind, but we have to sit through some amount of boring, flat countryside to get there.

Many other reviews have covered the plot of this novel, so I will keep this review short. Margaret Atwood is becoming one of my favorite contemporary writers. It seems like every sentence she writes floats in meaning and beauty. Yes, she seems to like jumping around a bit in her narrative, but it's not too hard to follow and really does add something to the story.

Unlike a lot of other dystopian novels, this does not seem to be a world of the far future, but maybe description of next year's headlines. If you like gardening, recycling, science, religion, and have a pessimistic view of the future you will enjoy this book.

I read this book a few months ago and it touched me.And has shaped my thinking to one of daily routine and habit to one in which I look deeper at things than ever before. What makes this futuristic dystopian novel so great is the fact that she gives us what COULD happen.
In September, I finally returned to college and am working on two degrees that relate to Environmental Science. Her thoughts on genetically modified foods and genetic splicing are actually what is being worked on currently. As I read case studies on monkeys who shared DNA with jellyfish, the different genetically modified foods that we eat daily that implanted with built-in pesticide controls, the splicing of genes in plants and animals to produce super species, the recent news that the Western Black Rhino became extinct because of poaching, etc...This book has a deeper meaning than the paycheck of a bestseller. It's not a book that was written for the money, It was meant for the passion of knowing and wnting to know more. Unlike others, I find her humourous names for GMO's and creatures introduced uplifting, especially in a book about an oppressed society. If you enjoy novels that make you really think, you will enjoy this book. If you are passionate about what happens in this world (within corporations, science, etc), you will also enjoy this book.

I thought this was a great follow up to Oryx & Crake - to hear the story from the outside, or the 'Waterless Flood' and how it effected other characters in the Crakers world. The writing is fantastic and it sucks you in like the first book in the series but with an impending sense of doom.

As a male, you would think I would get sick of Atwood beating me over the head with a lead pipe every other year, but I keep coming back for more. I found this book a bit tedious at times--I am not sure why some of the material was necessary to advance the story. I started to lose a little patience and say to myself, "Get to the point." That being said, I believe the book is worth the reader's time. Atwood fans will love it, most will like it, while others will endure it. All things considered, I preferred Oryx and Crake over this one, though I can't say exactly why. Regardless, while I like some of her stories that are a bit less futuristic and allegorical better, this was a good book in my humble opinion.

Atwood offers up a startling futurist vision of the world, one that darkly mirrors our present wave of reality all too well. Orwellian. The story works as a companion to her previous novel, Oryx and Crake, but stands firmly on it's own as a complete work of art. Her characters are richly felt and beautifully realized, and through them, immersing the reader into their individual (and communal) hopes and fears. And the desire to survive. Yet often wondering why -- questioning the purpose of existence itself. I especially love the book's philosophical, spiritual and religious tone throughout. Margaret Atwood is one of our greatest writers, and this book should be read by everyone. It's another wake-up call -- to jolt the human race into becoming humane, and helping to prevent us from perishing as a species. Yes, the theme is dark, but also filled with love. Another masterpiece.

I read all three books together, starting with this one which was probably the wrong way but worked for me because the last one is more full of character and less of theory and Toby's voice is by far the most likable compared to Jimmy (Snowman's) and Ren's. Together, they have stayed with me and I find myself constantly thinking about them. Lots of what Atwood predicted in the first books has already come true. Her take on the big pharms is especially good. As a writer of about Atwood's age who has not been able to keep up well with computer technology I admired her for doing so (at least she convinced me.) I loved the Crakes. I was sorry there were only heterosexual models of relationships in all three books, unrealistic for the future. One more, please, in Toby's voice, featuring Crakes, and with gay/lesbian characters.

I'm not a science fiction fan. Some consider this speculative fiction. It could even be called apocalyptic fiction is that were a genre and if it were one could easily compare take a literary comparison between this and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Trouble is, McCarthy's work was so fabulously written I read it twice. Ms. Atwood didn't captivate me so much with The Year of the Flood. I was interested in the religious themes as well as the corporate control ribbon that wound it's way through. For many this would be an uncomfortable read simply because our American society is on the cusp of many of these events and in some respects we are already beyond the cusp. There are many questions left unanswered here, but this is how it is with the 2nd book in a trilogy. I will be interested to see how Ms. Atwood follows the remaining characters through in the next installment.

Margaret Atwood's ongoing journey to explore her imagination's paths through the future hits another high point with this novel. Restrained, beautiful, oddly humorous and cautious, 'The Year of the Flood' shames heavy-handed dystopian SF with its subtle writing and even more subtle shifts in plot. Like Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Down,' this work takes a compelling but shopworn concept and turns it inside-out. I loved how Atwood takes for granted her readers' willingness to go where she takes us: through a labyrinthine exploration of the years before and after a great plague, with no pandering, no laborious explanations, and with an ever-changing cast of characters who unfold as subtly as the story. I recommend this to anyone searching for an antidote to the typical.

I must disagree with many of the posts/reviews I have seen here. This book was full of interesting ideas about the fate and future of the human race, however the characters never engaged my interest like Oryx and Crake. Both Toby and Ren/Brenda were BORING. Nothing was resolved in a believable manner and it just seemed to end suddenly after 300+ pages. I forced myself to finish, hoping that something interesting would occur, some sort of dramatic twist, but alas, I was disappointed by the non-ending. I also don't think this book can stand alone without some background knowledge of Oryx and Crake. Especially the encounter near the end, I don't believe this would make much sense to those who have not read O&C previously. Also, the God's Gardeners' songs quickly became tiresome.

Worth reading? dunno...right now I would say don't waste your time, give it a good skim at best.

Second book of the MaddAddam trilogy, absolutely worth reading all three. The dystopian world gets so much more fleshed out but don’t go into this one expecting the storyline to follow Jimmy again. I got so into Oryx and Crake that it was immediately disappointing and confusing to me to open this one with totally different characters but trust me it’s worth jt

Margaret did it again and in stunning fashion. I recently read Handmaid's Tale and thought it would be tough to beat that story, but this one did it hands down.

I'm a huge fan of dystopias, especially post modern stories that could easily be true.

The concept took our current green movement and wove it into the foundation for most of the main characters. Interwoven into this story Margaret introduces you into a world where corporations have taken over world governance and profits/greed fuel the engines of the world.

As one can expect an unregulated world devoid of a moral thread leads corporations to seek the ultimate goal of an immortal being. They get close, but at a huge cost to nearly every species. The waterless flood is the result of messing with the genes and it effectively cleanses the earth.

The ending leaves you wondering if the final voices are of other humans or if the last human's ears hear the singing of the new breed that inherits the Earth.

I'm also an ultra-runner and found this quote in the book and could not resist keeping this one on the tip of my tongue, even though in the book it refers to something much darker than the final miles of an 100 mile race, so unless you have been down that road you will wonder why I made the connection:

The Longest Mile

The last mile is the longest mile-
'Tis then we weaken;
We lose the strength to run the race,
We doubt Hope's beacon.

Shall we turn back from this dark Road,
Footsore and weary,
When deep Despair has drained our Faith,
And all seems dreary?

Shall we give up the narrow path,
The plodding byway-
Chose Swift transport and false delight:
Destruction's highway?

Shall Enemies erase our life,
Our Message bury?
And shall they quench in war and strife
The torch we carry?

Take heart, oh dusty Travellers:
Though you may falter,
Though you be felled along the way,
You'll reach the Altar.

Race on, race on, though eyes grow dim,
And faint the Chorus;
God gives us Nature's green applause-
Such will restore us.

For in the effort is the Goal,
'Tis thus we're treasured:
He knows us by our Pilgrim Soul-
'Tis thus we're measured.

From The God's Gardeners Oral Hymnbook

All in all I recommend this book fully and would put it on par with the likes of Brave New World, 1984, The Road, and Fahrenheit 451.

I am a big Margaret Atwood fan, and although I LOVED Handmaid's Tale, I am not a fan of fictions about dystopia in general, mainly because it is hard to find something really original like The Handmaid's Tale. I didn't particularly like Oryx and Crake either for the same reason. I thought that this one was good but rather formulaic and predictable. I feel guilty saying this because I practically worship her and have so much respect for her....I can't wait to read another Atwood book like Alias Grace, Cat's eye, The Robber Bride...

For those interested in dystopian literature, "The Year of the Flood" is a must read. In the vein of "The Handmaid's Tale," Atwood has written another thoroughly immersing novel that grapples with the issues we are facing in our current world - but she takes these issues one step further to explore what will happen if society continues in its current path, or swerves in a new, and more fatal direction.

Many of the dystopian issues in "The Year of the Flood" were introduced to us in "Oryx and Crake," including bio-technology, the frighteningly powerful CorpsSeCorps, the up-scale Compounds and wasted Pleebands. Readers will be pleased to see that their old friends have reappeared: rakunks, pigoons, Happicuppa, ChickieNobs... But in this novel, Atwood further explores the growing existence of outlier religious/political groups, here "God's Gardeners," and the beliefs they propagate in a time of anarchy, excess and advanced technology. She considers how cults work on the human conscience, and whether or not these imprints last on the conscience. She also pushes more taboo possibilities, many of which involve the human body and how far society will use the body, in terms of sex and food.

For those who loved "Oryx and Crake," this novel acts as a parallel story - it chronicles the same major events, but steps outside of Jimmy's perspective and his close relationship with Crake and Oryx. These characters are included in the novel, and resurface in some surprising but intriguing coincidences with the more minor characters from "Oryx and Crake," such as Ren (Brenda) and Amanda Payne, who are now the main characters. I found that the twining of these two novels provided further insight on how the rest of the world (the world outside of the Compounds) was functioning when "the waterless flood" began. Although the novel introduces new events and secrecies that Jimmy was not privy to, I still longed for the story to travel in a wider range, for it ends just about where "Oryx and Crake" ended. Nonetheless, those who were curious about this ending will have some answers.

Though this novel still leaves some unanswered questions, what makes it worth reading are the character developments of Toby, Ren, Amanda and other characters such as Lucerne and Zeb. Atwood has a gift as story teller, and she is able to create such life-like characters that stay with me long after I have finished the book. I feel a real affinity towards sweet Jimmy, vulnerable Ren and strong Amanda. Their involvement in year of the "waterless flood" sheds further light about how far society can go when people are given "freedom to" (Handmaid's Tale). My head is still dazed from being lost in the surreal and yet forebodingly real world of "The Year of the Flood," but how I wish I could still stay in that world and continue reading! I hope that Atwood will write a third novel set in this world with these characters. All her novels will keep the reader turning pages, and this one is no exception.

As a avid fanboy of Ms. Atwood's unique brand of speculative fiction, I had greatly anticipated the release of this sequel to the excellent "Oryx and Crake." This novel upholds Atwood's well-deserved reputation as a wizard-like raconteur, but lacks the substance of the previous novel. "The Year of the Flood," which unfolds coterminously with "Oryx," feels just a bit too much like wadding. I could not escape feeling that Atwood had retroactively pried gaps in the "Oryx" for the sole purpose of filling them with the gratuitous intersections of this novel and the world of Oryx. This criticism, notwithstanding, I did relish Atwood's portrayal of the Gardeners and their hymns. In their simplicity, Atwood makes the sensible point that in a broken society the crazies are sometimes the only sane ones.

If you have the option, you should choose the audio version of this book (available for mp3 players from the store-owned affiliate audible.com. Linked/listed in the store.com formats above). The hymns (lyrics by Margaret Atwood), integral to the story, are beautifully sung in the audio book version: " Hymns of the God's Gardeners; Lyrics from Year of the Flood" by Orville Stoeber;Margaret Atwood. Sung beautifully to guitar accompaniment. Alternatively, the album can be downloaded in mp3 format from the store.com ($8.99).

I liked Atwood's approach. Breaking down each book in the trilogy into main characters and how they all intersected was intriguing. I liked her post apocalyptic descriptions and sociology ideas as well. Sales, after all, is creating a need that didn't exist before, and filling that man made need with the made made cure or solution. So, the for profit corps take over the world and one makes the killer germ and then markets the cure. Except, when Adam and Zeb get involved, things get dicey. Good read. I liked the pigoons in the end.

This comment is for the audiobook which was, for the most part, performed well. It is a slow and somewhat drab story (especially compared to Oryx and Crake as other reviewers point out) but I could have certainly done without the god-awful inspirational soft-rock songs by Orville Stoeber. I didn't see the print so I am not sure what the hymns are like there but thankfully I had the fast-forward.

I enjoyed this book, though not as much as the first. It's essentially a stand alone book in the same universe, with some minor characters from the first book. Overall, I enjoyed the book, and found the invented religion interesting.

I enjoy the second book in this series. It seems a little too convenient that lack of the characters in the book are tied together and know each other from past lives. I think this takes away from the story a little bit.

i loved oryx and crake which happens to be the first book of this far-fetched triology. margaret atwood is one of my favorite writers, she is the reason i became an avid reader of the "dystopian (sci-fi)" genre. oryx and crate was brilliant, i couldnt get enough of it. so when theyear of the flood was published, i ordered it at once, and TRIED to read it as fast..i couldnt. i even skipped throught the last chapters. full of cliches, repetitions but somehow not enough recaps, poor very poor dialogues, sketchy characters...so not like MA. if i knew that the story would go on - or flash back in this case - like this, i wouldnt have read it. in fact i dont think i will be reading the final book of he triology.

Really enjoyed The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. Read her "Handmaiden's Tale" many years ago. She is so inventive and imaginative. I love reading a book that takes me to a different place and makes me think "outside the box". That is one of the appealing factors of futuristic or sci fi stories. Just listened to "Oryx and Crake" several months ago and got a big kick out of the way the stories overlapped in "The Year of the FLood". I was disappointed in the way the story just stopped. I assume there is another book coming that will take us futher along in the likes of the Snowman, Toby and Ren. I hope so. Atwood's books are thought provoking and I found myself thinking about her stories long after I read them. I think she is brilliant.
The addition of music with lyrics peaked my curiousity at first and gave a broader picture into the lives of the Gardeners. Further in to the story, however, I grew tired of it and, I am sorry to say, fast forwarded through them. I applaud the attempt and creativity. It added a whole other layer to the storyline.

This audio production of The Year of the Flood features outstanding readers whose voices fit the spirit of the characters in the story.

A wonderful addition to the book on disc are the hymns, with instrumental accompaniment, that are part of the Adam One chapters. The original songs are a sort of Greek chorus, a commentary on the teachings of Adam One and are a delightful contrast to the spoken words of the readers.

As a huge Margaret Atwood fan, I really looked forward to this book. It would seem that it would be as good as The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, but it's just not. Something is missing...the prose isn't what we're used to from Atwood. Too much dialogue, not enough lyricism and figurative language. I found myself not really caring about the endless backstories of Toby and Ren, and just wanting to read about how they survived the Waterless Flood. So I skimmed, looking for those bits...and found very few. Not sure what happened with this story, but I think Atwood is off here.

Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. If I get away from her writings, I forget how much I enjoy them. I'm finishing up this trilogy and I have to force myself to put it down.

Her work always gives a different perspective on society. This is no different. We can become what is considered more and more civilized but lose it instantly. And then what do we have? Makes me wonder about the live my grandchildren will live.

The first half of the book painfully sets up the story using varying character reference points, a whiplash between past and present, and an interesting perspective of evolutionary religion. About 2/3 in it gets better but the end - lose money - and leaves the reader wondering why they stuck it out at all!?

I enjoyed this book, though not as much as the first. It's essentially a stand alone book in the same universe, with some minor characters from the first book. Overall, I enjoyed the book, and found the invented religion interesting.

I enjoy the second book in this series. It seems a little too convenient that lack of the characters in the book are tied together and know each other from past lives. I think this takes away from the story a little bit.

i loved oryx and crake which happens to be the first book of this far-fetched triology. margaret atwood is one of my favorite writers, she is the reason i became an avid reader of the "dystopian (sci-fi)" genre. oryx and crate was brilliant, i couldnt get enough of it. so when theyear of the flood was published, i ordered it at once, and TRIED to read it as fast..i couldnt. i even skipped throught the last chapters. full of cliches, repetitions but somehow not enough recaps, poor very poor dialogues, sketchy characters...so not like MA. if i knew that the story would go on - or flash back in this case - like this, i wouldnt have read it. in fact i dont think i will be reading the final book of he triology.

Really enjoyed The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. Read her "Handmaiden's Tale" many years ago. She is so inventive and imaginative. I love reading a book that takes me to a different place and makes me think "outside the box". That is one of the appealing factors of futuristic or sci fi stories. Just listened to "Oryx and Crake" several months ago and got a big kick out of the way the stories overlapped in "The Year of the FLood". I was disappointed in the way the story just stopped. I assume there is another book coming that will take us futher along in the likes of the Snowman, Toby and Ren. I hope so. Atwood's books are thought provoking and I found myself thinking about her stories long after I read them. I think she is brilliant.
The addition of music with lyrics peaked my curiousity at first and gave a broader picture into the lives of the Gardeners. Further in to the story, however, I grew tired of it and, I am sorry to say, fast forwarded through them. I applaud the attempt and creativity. It added a whole other layer to the storyline.

This audio production of The Year of the Flood features outstanding readers whose voices fit the spirit of the characters in the story.

A wonderful addition to the book on disc are the hymns, with instrumental accompaniment, that are part of the Adam One chapters. The original songs are a sort of Greek chorus, a commentary on the teachings of Adam One and are a delightful contrast to the spoken words of the readers.

As a huge Margaret Atwood fan, I really looked forward to this book. It would seem that it would be as good as The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, but it's just not. Something is missing...the prose isn't what we're used to from Atwood. Too much dialogue, not enough lyricism and figurative language. I found myself not really caring about the endless backstories of Toby and Ren, and just wanting to read about how they survived the Waterless Flood. So I skimmed, looking for those bits...and found very few. Not sure what happened with this story, but I think Atwood is off here.

Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. If I get away from her writings, I forget how much I enjoy them. I'm finishing up this trilogy and I have to force myself to put it down.

Her work always gives a different perspective on society. This is no different. We can become what is considered more and more civilized but lose it instantly. And then what do we have? Makes me wonder about the live my grandchildren will live.

I know her better now; she spends a great deal of time reenforcing her disgust with humanity's general abuse of the planet and it's creatures. There are minor exciting, tension laden plot points every so often but mostly the story slowly, circularly builds to right where you want it to and leaves you wanting more.
She celebrates and condemns her historical and fictional heroes and villains consistently in a very wise and patient manner. I'm all the wiser and very grateful for her hard work and incredible creative blend of science and vision. I can't wait to get into MaddAddam. My only critical desire as a reader would be more 'excitement'. I feel bad saying it; i imagine she writes it this way intentionally and would have much to 'observe' about my criticism:)

The first half of the book painfully sets up the story using varying character reference points, a whiplash between past and present, and an interesting perspective of evolutionary religion. About 2/3 in it gets better but the end - lose money - and leaves the reader wondering why they stuck it out at all!?

I found a lot of the action and descriptions quite matter of fact and without much personality. I will admit that I haven't read the first book in the series for a few years so that might contribute to my disappointment

Year of the flood is an elaboration on the world Oryx and Crake creates, not breaking new ground but rather gaining a deeper feminine perspective on it's environment.

Year of the Flood is suitably Oryx and Crakes "sister" book. Sister because it seems to assume the role of the feminine perspective, while O&C is relegated to the masculine. Each book seems reflective on the other books material, albeit sometimes awkwardly. Jimmy's role seems a bit overwrought, however still effective. Year of the flood feels on par with O&C yet O&C is more readable. The characters are interesting if not slightly bland, yet each acts as a superb foil in order to enumerate plot and character development. We see the characters through the eyes of many in order to get a deeper understanding of who they are. The only part I didn't like was the grating gardener theology. While it did indeed make some interesting observations about Atwood's dystopian future, it seemed to ruin the pace of the deeper story.

As for the Hymns, although I do appreciate the effort, I had no interest in listening to them, though I'm sure they were more effective than simply reading the lyrics without music.

I also found the reading to be well done, though not very enthusiastic. And even though I didn't care for Mark Bramhall's role, I found his reading perfectly suited.

Highly recommend this book.I just finished Year of the Flood and can't stop thinking about it. It got inside my head. The characters are weird and amazing and sad and desperate and human. It's related to Orxy and Crake, which I read when it came out and liked, but not like this. I was not ready for this book to end. Even my pessimist self believes in the ability of these characters to reinvent humanity. This is Atwood at her science fiction best.

I was at Duke University during the filming of the Handmaid's Tale and have always been a fan of the kind of dystopian fantasies Atwood imagines. But to be brief... I think Margaret Atwood has become an example of the kind of author who continues to surf on her reputation long after the wave has crashed. This is a near complete recycle of Oryx and Crake. I could not find any compelling reason to care about any of the characters or the (recycled) creature hybrids (rakunks - skunk plus raccoon - get it?) that populate this money-making little book. I cannot believe she was interviewed on McNeill Lehrer about this... there are so other books and authors out there that deserve more airtime than this. However, perhaps I'm overly critical having just finished a superb piece in the same genre... Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".

While I enjoy The Year of the Flood, it was not as good as Oryx and Crake. What I actually liked most about it was getting to learn more about certain characters from Oryx and Crake, even though they weren't the main characters (they were more like very very minor characters). I liked the storyline with the Gods Gardeners, though some of the things got a bit too religious for me. But the positives outweigh the negatives, so overall I would recommend this novel, but only after reading Oryx and Crake. I would recommend reading them very close together. I reread Oryx and Crake a couple months ago and am glad I did.

I was kind of expecting the story to pick up right where book 1 left off, but it didn't. As such, I wasn't incredibly engaged. Ok trilogy so far though. I loved book 1...we'll chalk this up to the "sophomore curse," and hope for the end of the story arc in book 3.

One of the best novels I have ever read! As someone who has felt this dystopian world beginning all around us right now, I was "hooked" in the first book, Oryx and Crake, but I really fell under the spell of, The Year of The Flood. I could not put it down. It is still effecting me. I hope that the last in the trilogy will be as good.

I just finished this book, and wanted to see what others wrote. It seems, however, that nearly everyone feels the need to summarize the book. I'm more interested in what other readers thought of the book.

I've enjoyed all the fiction Ms. Atwood has written. My favorite was, and remains, The Blind Assassin. However, I enjoyed this book as well. I found myself quite sad at the end, for Ren, for Jimmy, for Killer, and, of course for Toby. I have always disliked the "waving blue you-know-whats people" in this book, (who are also in O&C), but they really aren't that important to enjoying the story lines, and they only appear brielfy.

Someone wondered why anyone would splice lions and lambs together, or raccoons and skunks, and it seems to me that this question is a clue that the person who asks it is missing the fundamental point of Ms. Atwood's world. Why dress in scales? why eat Secretburgers? Why sell vitamins that actually cause illness? The humans in this world aren't asking why--they're asking, and selling, "Why not?"

I absolutely loved reading Margaret Atwood's latest book "The Year of the Flood." I can't wait to read the 3rd book in the trilogy which is supposed to be about the "MaddAddam" (religous/scientific/environmental activist? group) mentioned in both "Oryx and Crake" and "The Year of the Flood" novels. I just hope that Ms Atwood doesn't make us wait another 6 years for the third installment.

Like "Oryx and Crake", the characters in "The Year of the Flood" live in a dystopian society controlled by the evil "CorpSeCorp" Corporations and populated by genetically engineered plants, animals and humans. Occasionally these genetic modifications proved beneficial for humans and the planet, but by in large they mostly had unintended and disaterous results for the planet and its inhabitants. "The Year of the Flood" occurs in the near future and covers basically the same time period as the previous novel in the trilogy "Oryx and Crake".

Some friends and I were recently discussing whether it would be better to read "Oryx and Crake" first or to read "The Year of the Flood" first. Some argued that if they had the chance to do it again they would definately read "The Year of the Flood" first. I disagreed because "The Year of the Flood" includes so many small funny and insightful referrences to "Oryx and Crake" that the reader misses out on some of the fun of reading "The Year of the Flood" by not knowing the story of "Oryx and Crake".

Now that I've sat down and re-read both "Oryx and Crake" and "The Year of the Flood" I can see how it could be fun to read "The Year of the Flood" first. The characters in the new novel are more multi-dimensional and far more sympathetic than the characters in "Oryx and Crake". Seeing the characters from "Oryx and Crake" thru the lense of "The Year of the Flood" makes them far more interesting and makes "Oryx and Crake" a better and more exciting read.

amazing sequal to oryx and crake. i am happy with the ending but i didnt want it to end! i lve margaret atwood and hope she has more post-apocolyptics, she's amazing at them.
this book is about the hippie tree lovers from the first book and shows more people survived after the break out. amazingly intricate book! wow!!!!!

These books borrow quite a bit from Octavia Butler's parables with their post apocalyptic sects and writings Oryx and Crake is the more imaginative of the 2 I think. Very enjoyable reading. I will try the third as well.

The ending of Oryx and Crake was a little vague (as was The Handmaid's Tale). As the author says in her part of the review, so many people asked her what happens, she wrote this book!

Like the first book YotF starts at the end, then goes back to the beginning, and takes it from there. Makes for a great read! (I think it took me five nights to finish it).

Great story, kept me going wanting to know how the different characters end up. Although it's not necessary to read the first book, it helps.

Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite authors. This book was as good as I expected!

I wonder how many people will actually become practicing Gd's Gardeners now.

I liked this book lots it kept me in suspense I like all the characters it took a little work to keep track of who was who and what they were doing. I was a disappointed in the final few pages because it was not the ending I was expecting but don't let that stop you from purchasing this book and enjoying it

Very fast paced and character s that u will cheer for my only qualm is how it ends like I want more an can't keep us hanging like that but guess that means I'll be looking for th next book ughh hope it is out already!!!

Love it! The first book (Oryx and Crake) dragged a bit (probably because I didn't like the main character, Jimmy), but the life inside God's Gardeners was really interesting. Add to that the survival stories of certain characters and I found it riveting. I went right on to MaddAddam.

As an avid devourer of dystopian fiction, Margaret Atwood has placed high on my favorite author list for nearly two decades. The Year of the Flood builds where Oryx and Crake left off. I recently put off finishing TYotF for a sixth time to revisit the first in the trilogy and prolong my time spent in her world.

WARNING: There are rape scenes! They are not gratuitous, but disturbing none-the-less, and have kept me from recommending this book to teenagers. I like to let my friends know, too, so that they can make decisions about how to approach the book.

I would not have chosen this book on my own but read it only because it was assigned to my son for a college writing course. I found it interesting and engaging. the plot was somewhat plausible and i found the characters interesting.

The book is not my favorite Atwood, it was clearly a means to an end, being the middle book of the trilogy. But as always for me, Atwood draws me in to find out more, so here I am reading the finale. My biggest complaint was the audiobook version, I actually finished it in Ebook format. I have never and hope to never again have singing of any kind in an audiobook, it was awful. I know that the songs were turned into an album, but I wouldn't have singing if I were reading the book, so it irritated me. Also, I tend to not be a fan of different people doing the dialogue. In this case the male voice I have heard before and it is so distinctive, all I could think of was the previous book he had read. Also, I did not like the voice for Toby, did not fit for me. Okay, had to get that off my chest.

Her books are mesmerizing and depressing in a way that is strangely addictive. Her storytelling is a skill that most authors need to develop. This particular story interested me in the way it managed to merge religion and science and made me see similarities in groups of people I had not considered very similar.

Did Margaret Atwood get hit on the head with a Twilight book and forget how to write? I've been a huge fan of her for years and have read almost everything that she's put out, minus some short stories and poems, but this is the first book of hers that I've truly despised. The character of Ren is simpering and stupid and one dimensional. A fair portion of the book is devoted to her waxing poetic about Jimmy and how he's broken her heart... convenient, because I believe she got a few paragraphs at best in Oryx and Crake. We also get awesome lines from her such as (not an exact quote) "I thought about how ironic my mother's situation was. I had just learned about irony in my post-modern [college] dance class. This is WHY her situation was ironic..." Seriously? Don't spell it out for me. Even if (maybe) you are trying to be ironic about it.

I guess my main complaint is that there was none of the raw female emotion that I've come to love, none of the whip smart prose, none of... well, not really much of anything, except a LOT of coincidences. Even though I agree in a large part with the message of the gardners, they too seemed forced. And the hymns.... oh my. This book may have gotten three stars if I had read it on paper, but I chose to listen to it while at work and apparently they had the bright idea to put them all to music to further enhance my experience. I was willing to put up with one or two, but there must have been 15 or so? I didn't keep track, I learned my lesson and fastforwarded through most of them. You can hear them for yourself over at the Year of the Flood website, although I don't really recommend it.

In conclusion, I'm sad that this book was what it was. I wanted more, and it didn't deliver. I stuck it out and finished it half an hour ago and just felt like ranting.

Very fast paced and character s that u will cheer for my only qualm is how it ends like I want more an can't keep us hanging like that but guess that means I'll be looking for th next book ughh hope it is out already!!!

Love it! The first book (Oryx and Crake) dragged a bit (probably because I didn't like the main character, Jimmy), but the life inside God's Gardeners was really interesting. Add to that the survival stories of certain characters and I found it riveting. I went right on to MaddAddam.

As an avid devourer of dystopian fiction, Margaret Atwood has placed high on my favorite author list for nearly two decades. The Year of the Flood builds where Oryx and Crake left off. I recently put off finishing TYotF for a sixth time to revisit the first in the trilogy and prolong my time spent in her world.

WARNING: There are rape scenes! They are not gratuitous, but disturbing none-the-less, and have kept me from recommending this book to teenagers. I like to let my friends know, too, so that they can make decisions about how to approach the book.

I would not have chosen this book on my own but read it only because it was assigned to my son for a college writing course. I found it interesting and engaging. the plot was somewhat plausible and i found the characters interesting.

The book is not my favorite Atwood, it was clearly a means to an end, being the middle book of the trilogy. But as always for me, Atwood draws me in to find out more, so here I am reading the finale. My biggest complaint was the audiobook version, I actually finished it in Ebook format. I have never and hope to never again have singing of any kind in an audiobook, it was awful. I know that the songs were turned into an album, but I wouldn't have singing if I were reading the book, so it irritated me. Also, I tend to not be a fan of different people doing the dialogue. In this case the male voice I have heard before and it is so distinctive, all I could think of was the previous book he had read. Also, I did not like the voice for Toby, did not fit for me. Okay, had to get that off my chest.

Her books are mesmerizing and depressing in a way that is strangely addictive. Her storytelling is a skill that most authors need to develop. This particular story interested me in the way it managed to merge religion and science and made me see similarities in groups of people I had not considered very similar.

Did Margaret Atwood get hit on the head with a Twilight book and forget how to write? I've been a huge fan of her for years and have read almost everything that she's put out, minus some short stories and poems, but this is the first book of hers that I've truly despised. The character of Ren is simpering and stupid and one dimensional. A fair portion of the book is devoted to her waxing poetic about Jimmy and how he's broken her heart... convenient, because I believe she got a few paragraphs at best in Oryx and Crake. We also get awesome lines from her such as (not an exact quote) "I thought about how ironic my mother's situation was. I had just learned about irony in my post-modern [college] dance class. This is WHY her situation was ironic..." Seriously? Don't spell it out for me. Even if (maybe) you are trying to be ironic about it.

I guess my main complaint is that there was none of the raw female emotion that I've come to love, none of the whip smart prose, none of... well, not really much of anything, except a LOT of coincidences. Even though I agree in a large part with the message of the gardners, they too seemed forced. And the hymns.... oh my. This book may have gotten three stars if I had read it on paper, but I chose to listen to it while at work and apparently they had the bright idea to put them all to music to further enhance my experience. I was willing to put up with one or two, but there must have been 15 or so? I didn't keep track, I learned my lesson and fastforwarded through most of them. You can hear them for yourself over at the Year of the Flood website, although I don't really recommend it.

In conclusion, I'm sad that this book was what it was. I wanted more, and it didn't deliver. I stuck it out and finished it half an hour ago and just felt like ranting.

I'm not sure why most of the reviews are that good. In the genres of futurism, satire, and post-apocalyptic fiction, this is weak tea. A new "Brave New World" as one cover blurb has it? I think not. I knew Brave New World, Brave New World was a friend of mine. And Margaret Atwood, you're no Aldous Huxley.

I found both Oryx and Crake and TYOTF to have some interesting ideas. Combined together, they may have made a decent short novel. But the themes are obvious and derivative, the dramatic tension low, the narration uninspiring, the technology descriptions cursory, the poetry lame.
The cutsey names for everything? Sometimes the novel read as THE END OF HUMANITY as told by a few blasé valley girls and their dysfunctional pseudo family. But even the dysfunction was boring.
The narrative style, interposing several different time periods and a couple of narrators, had promise but was ultimately more distracting than anything else.

It wasn't a terrible read but just not something to write home about.

I know this is a sequel to Oryx and Crake, which I haven't read, but that didn't seem to be a problem for me. I love survival stories, post-apocalyptic novels, etc., and this one was very engaging - lots of varied but interesting characters.

The narratives are very compelling, however the intermittent stories in connection with the gardeners seem to fill in additional details which make the narratives all the more meaningful. Great read, can't wait to start the third book.

As a long time SF fan, I never have never read Atwood. But I do know that her critical reviews have been very good, with "The Handmaid's Tale" showing up on many Best Science Fiction lists. So, when I found that "Handmaiden" was checked out of the local library, I went with "Oryx and Crake. And, I have to say, that I am ambivalent.

Technically, Atwood is brilliant. Her prose vivid. Unlike a lot of SF writers, she knows how to draw a scene. She uses literary techniques, like internal monologues and flash-backs, quite effectively without the writing ever coming off as "artsy".

Indeed, this book could be seen as a clinic in applying the writer's workshop adage, "Show. Don't tell." And yet, I find the book poorly written. The characters have no "spirit" to my tooth.

For instance, Crake seems like just another slightly disturbed, geeky adolescent for most of the book. And, suddenly, he is 30, recast as Madd Adam, an Internet maven drawing talented eco terrorists to him. Why? Hints of his wanting order and correcting genetic flaws seem unsupported by his character. And Crake's relationship with Oryx, which seems devoid of passion, suddenly surfaces as a passionate force, driving a wedge between Snowman and he.

Lastly, why would Crake inoculate so few against a potential plague?

Oryx, too, seems a tad wanly drawn. While her back-story seems plausible--her life as a child sold into slavery and eventual prostitution, would lead to a sort of learned helplessness--there is little sense of how that back-story would grow and act as an adult human.

And, lastly, I found myself annoyed with Snowman. He is surrounded by simple technology that he could exploit quite easily, like solar power and ample land for developing an agriculture. And, knowing his ammunition was running out, could have taken other measures to refortify himself, like raiding a sporting goods store for bows, arrows and knives. And yet, he does nothing but mope. Even if he works, and hopes, in vain, there were likely others

If you are looking for dystopia, and want to bridge out from "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Brave New World," there are many excellent choices. My favorites, listed below, are far superior in my opinion.

=> A Canticle for Leibowitz
=> Earth Abides
=> Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
=> I Am Legend