MaddAddam (MaddAddam Trilogy)

I'm happy to have been able to delve once again into the world Atwood has Created. Now that this universe has been constructed, she's taken the characters and run with it. I hope to see the trend continue.

Margaret Atwood is wonderful. I wish there was a 4th book of the MaddAddam. I found it difficult at first because the story came from a different angle than the first two but eventually I was devouring her every word.

The book was well worth the wait. I have read the first two books a couple of times - now it is time to start from the beginning and read them as a trilogy! Margaret Atwood, you are my favourite author!

I found Orynx and Crake beautiful, sad, poignant. Unfortunately the next two books in this trilogy were a huge disappointment. Perhaps if Atwood had cut 100 pages from each of them they would have been more readable. The invented slang of the post apocalyptic world was grating. Much worse was the psycho-babble new age religion that comes complete with hyms. At first I thought these hymns etc. were used ironically- but as I progressed through the pages it appears Atwood thought that these silly takes on traditional protestant and anti-war tunes were profound. I read somewhere that she was actually setting these songs to music and planning to release them. Too often a well respected author gets lazy and self indulgent and dumps a load on her reader and expects her name and reputation to carry it off. Sorry Margaret, not this time.

What an amazing ending to Atwood's trilogy. MaddAddam offers all the right bits of wool to complete a fascinating, complex narrative. Hers is, of course, a cautionary tale, but also one filled with hope for rebuilding the future. All things must end, and ending just signals the necessity of change whether through adaptation or evolution. Margaret Atwood words are amazing.

If you are interested in global warming, the overuse of antibiotics, genetic modification or any of the other major concerns of our day, this book, the last of Margaret Atwood's trilogy, will fascinate and frighten you. A true "page-turner"!

Although I agree with readers that the first two books in the trilogy were wonderful, this last book I had to force myself to read. It should be titled "Zebulon's Story." The main characters in the story actually change: Strong Amanda becomes weak and is all but written out of the story; Self-motivated Toby is whiny and clingy; Jimmy is only in the background; and those that surrounded Glenn "Crake" that survived the waterless flood are shallow and silly. The only character that stays true is Zeb. And the entire book is about him. And it goes nowhere.

What is the book even about? I don't know. So much of the book was just "filler" and could have easily been edited out, but then the story would have been so much shorter. Additionally, despite the first few pages summarizing the preceding books, there is so much reference to the first books, that it becomes repetitive. It just seemed that Margret Atwood did not know where to take the story, so she just started writing and went off on a tangent. I cannot explain how disappointing this book was--especially when I was so looking forward to reading it. I even re-read the first two books before I began this one.

I am so absolutely disappointed with this book.

I admire anyone who can make a living as a writer and achieve such a high level of acclaim as has Margaret Atwood. But I will confess that I am puzzled by the hoopla surrounding this series.

I read a short blurb by Nan Talese touting Atwood’s latest book, MaddAddam, in The New Yorker. I figured if someone as talented and sophisticated as Nan Talese took note of the book, then it might be worth investigating. I later realized she is the editor so it was more of a PR plug, but still...the book received praise from many sources.

Sooo I started with the first book in the series and downloaded the audio version from Audible. It was tedious. The meandering plot and endless, banal, and repetitive interior monologue of one of the principal characters, in particular, set my teeth on edge. I love richly nuanced characters and plot detail--am not an impatient reader or listener for that matter--but in this case I found myself thinking, “Oh just get on with it!” Example: “It’s daybreak. The break of day. Toby turns this word over: break, broke, broken. What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out the light?” Better to have been spared this and similar ruminations.

And while the imagined future of The Year of the Flood was believable, it did not feel especially original. It read like fan fiction heavily based on “I Love Science” sites with a tabloid twist. The models for God’s Gardeners, by example, were the unwashed hippies, religious zealots, eco-vegetarians and survivalists of the not so distant past and the immediate present, with nothing especially novel in their development other than the irony of designating people like Rachel Carson or Euell Gibbons as their celebrated saints. The technology references, even to the level of gene splices, actually felt dated. Often what was intended as satire or savvy insight tended to play like a bad SNL skit. The preoccupation with “naughty things” came across as a tad salacious, and the dialogue, particularly in the mouths of younger characters, did not feel authentic.

However, I decided that perhaps I was just not enamored of the audio presentation and the literary devices, and so gave the book a passing grade despite my criticisms.

The second book in the series, Oryx and Crake (Kindle version), was better. I will leave it at that.

Nonetheless, I still had high(er) expectations for the final book. Having come this far, I determined to read it. Unfortunately, it did not fare well in my opinion. Words like contrived, implausible, sloppy and poorly edited come to mind. So when I read the following comment by reviewer Zashibis, it summarized my thoughts exactly: “In all, MaddAddam reads like a first draft that nobody dared question or revise--an improvisation in which loose ends, instead of being tied up, are multiplied exponentially.”

Perhaps that is, in part, the point. Perhaps another installment is planned to unravel all those loose ends. Seriously? I hope not. I will take it on faith that Ms. Atwood is a great author and hope that her fan base is not similarly disappointed. But I can’t imagine that MaddAddam is the best example of her work or capabilities.

Atwood is a fine writer, it is a pleasure reading her books. This is the third book in her trilogy and is a worthwhile read as are the other two, "Oryx & Crake" and"The Year of the Flood". She engages many contemporary issues, environmentalism, the position of corporations in modern America, the dangers of genetic modifications, etc. I recommend this book heartily!

Atwood is a fine writer, it is a pleasure reading her books. This is the third book in her trilogy and is a worthwhile read as are the other two, "Oryx & Crake" and"The Year of the Flood". She engages many contemporary issues, environmentalism, the position of corporations in modern America, the dangers of genetic modifications, etc. I recommend this book heartily!

Now that I've read all three books I feel a bit ridiculous for spending so much time and money on this rather lame fairy tale. And to find after three books that the author "crapped out" in the last chapter was a reel dissapointment.

I suggest that you don't make the same mistake.

I'm a big fan of Oryx and Crake but I barely made it through this book. There are two plot lines, the more prominent of which is boring, awkward to read, and tangential to what interested me about this series.

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.

Book 3 in the MaddAddam trilogy.

In the final novel of the series, Atwood combines the characters of the first two books in their fight to survive not just the end of the world, but the ruthless criminals who are hunting them. Toby becomes something of a prophet to the Crakers while Snowman-the-Jimmy recovers from his festering foot wound. The group of former God's Gardeners, former MaddAddamites, and Crakers makes an even odder alliance in order to defeat the Painballers before they're attacked. Our flashbacks follow Zeb, a God's Gardener who ripped the cult in half years ago. He's desperate to find Adam One, just for the peace of mind of knowing if he's alive or dead.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think it's the best of the series. While there are plenty of flashbacks into Zeb's childhood and life before the God's Gardeners, I feel like this book stayed in the present more than the first two. I loved the interactions between the humans and pigoons, especially the Craker involvement. I had quite a few laugh out loud moments when Toby relates stories to the Crakers. All in all, a great ending to a great trilogy.

Clearly, I'm in a small minority here, but I was utterly disappointed by MaddAddam. It's not only a limp conclusion to the trilogy; it's a sequel that is so badly conceived--so slipshod in its plotting, such a betrayal of the characterization of the first two works, and so much a boring retread of themes more cleverly presented the first two times around--that it actually diminishes the achievement of the earlier novels. It may, in fact, be the worst follow-up to a successful novel that I've ever read. If Oryx & Crake is Star Wars, then this novel is The Phantom Menace.

*SPOILERS ALERT*

There's simply no way to talk about the novel's failures without referring to specific plot points, so read no further if you intend to read MaddAddam but haven't read it yet.

The first problem is, having contrived to have Snowman and the Crakers meet up with the survivors of the MaddAddam / God's Gardener's group at the end of both of the previous novels, Atwood was, very clearly, at a total loss as to what to do with them next, how to move the story forward. Therefore, the "forward" plot movement of the novel only starts in earnest after p. 261, when it is (very implausibly) revealed that the Crakers (the genetically-modified humans) can communicate with the pigoons (the genetically-modified pigs) and the latter want the the normal Homo Sapiens's help with killing the two "painballers" captured at the end of Year of the Flood, but who were allowed to escape at the very beginning of this novel (another feeble implausibility). This, despite the fact that the MaddAddamites themselves have also been killing and eating the pigoons all along. So, the remaining humans, relying on the pigoons' sense of smell and a Craker translator, track the two killers down, but not before Snowman and Adam One are allowed to die comically melodramatic, self-sacrificing deaths, worthy of the most sentimentally piffling of Dickens's endings.

Atwood does understand that this wee episode--"bad guys escape; good guys hang around doing nothing in particular for several months; good guys track down bad guys"--isn't nearly enough of a plot to construct an entire novel around. So, most of the novel has nothing to do with that. Instead, it's backstory--yet more backstory, in a series of novels that has already consisted largely of flashbacks--this time about the previously peripheral character of Zeb.

Alas, this new backstory must rank as some of the very worst writing Atwood has ever done. It is completely haphazard, un-thought-out, driveling, and trivial. It reads, for all the world, like a very bad parody of Thomas Pynchon. Zeb steals millions of dollars from his father, a corrupt fraud of a fundamentalist preacher, and goes on the lam, spending hundreds of pages flitting from one nonsensical disguise to another: a pilot for an environmental group aiding polar bears, a burger flipper, a professional hacker, a magician's assistant, a toilet cleaner, a bouncer, a gardener, a data-entry drone...and probably others I'm forgetting. Not a single one of these incarnations is well-developed...or even lasts long enough long enough for me to begin to be interested in the new environment where Atwood has randomly inserted Zeb, always for only a single chapter, with no rhyme or reason. Whether working the most menial of jobs or more middle-class covers there's *never* actually a compelling reason for Zeb to be where he finds himself, especially since he supposedly has millions in the bank. It's all a chaotic, vapid shaggy dog story with no punchline at the end, told largely in annoyingly ersatz Raymond Chandler-eque "tough guy" speak.

Worse than the unnecessariness of Zeb's story, though, is the sheer sloppiness of its plotting. At one point, for instance, Zeb is assigned the important task of smuggling some dangerous new bio-engineered pills out of the HelthWyzer West compound where he has been working. The description of this goes on for pages and pages: the precautions Zeb takes when leaving the compound; the precautions taken hiding them at his new place of employ; how careful they are not to reveal the hiding place. Then, on a whim, he uses half of the pills in an act of revenge, and mayhem ensues. Following this, the person who asked him to smuggle the pills in the first place, Pilar, decides it might just be a good idea to find out what's actually in them. But then that plan to analyze the pills is casually abandoned, and the mysterious pills are simply retained by Pilar. And then, equally casually, after some years, they are sent to the young Crake as a legacy after Pilar's demise. And then Crake (it is presumed) uses them as the basis for his own BlyssPlus pills that destroy humanity.

Huh?

What a muddle. All these cloak-and-dagger peregrinations and machinations...but then Crake gets the keys to destroying humanity almost as an afterthought? Or did the saintly Pilar of YOTF actually intend that he use them in precisely that way? Atwood's intentions here are entirely opaque. It's especially frustrating, as the long-hinted-at connection between the God's Gardeners and Crake otherwise never comes to full fruition. Likewise, Zeb and Adam have to live in hiding for years and years, but then end up living together openly in the same community using their real names? It hardly makes any sense.

In all, MaddAddam reads like a first draft that nobody dared question or revise--an improvisation in which loose ends, instead of being tied up, are multiplied exponentially.

Also, as a scant handful of insightful reviewers here have pointed out, the characters of Toby, Ren, Amanda, and Snowman (irritatingly referred to here mostly as "Snowman-the-Jimmy") bear only a passing resemblance to the major characters of the same name in the earlier novels. Tough, self-reliant Toby of YOTF has become a simpering and pathetically insecure helpmate to Zeb--forever girlishly worried that he's eyeing one of the younger surviving women. Ren is a virtual non-entity, relegated to one or two unmemorable lines every 50 pages or so. And Snowman spends most of the book in a coma...and when he finally wakes up, he's without a scintilla of the self-awareness or irony that animated the narrative voice of Oryx & Crake. The "continuity" failure in relation to the previous novels is almost complete. And the brief reappearance of Adam as a hostage at the end of novel proves to be pointless as well as being utterly beyond belief.

Being Atwood, the novel is, of course, not 100% bad. There's a good deal of wit in Toby's attempts to render Zeb's stories about his life into a form the innocent Crakers can comprehend and use as the basis for a newly-minted bible / creation myth of their own. And some of the details about day-to-day life in a post-Apocalyptic world are cleverly worked out.

On the whole, however, this is a very sorry misstep from an author I've previously admired very much. I rather wish I hadn't read it and had spared myself this saccharine and third-rate chaser to the enjoyable Oryx & Crake and Year of the Flood.

Spoiler Alert (sort of)

"MaddAddam" is not a stand alone book. It's the third in a trilogy along with "Oryx and Crake" and "The Year of the Flood." If you haven't read the first two, this book is not likely to hold much appeal.

The storyline in the first two books happens concurrently and they don't necessarily need to be read in order. The timing of "MaddAddam" starts where the other two end and the specific storyline picks up right where the "Year of the Flood" left off.

While we're up to date on the timeline, this book is mostly a prequel -- filing in details of Zeb during his time before the Flood (the time of 'chaos'). Little is known about Zeb from the previous two books. He is a classic hero-anti-hero archetype -- smart, resourceful, the go-to-guy, the protector. And in this book we find out he was wealthy. Not wealthy from from industrial inventiveness as in Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark. The new way. Hacker wealth. Digital rip-off. Zeb's only target -- a sleazeball, evangelical, murdering father (maybe his father).

The backstory of Zeb's escapades and that of his brother (not brother), Adam, takes place in a not so distant future. While Atwood's description and branding of that future are well written, I did not find it particularly interesting. Just step outside, surf the Internet, suspend your cultural indoctrination. It's already out there. Happening in plain sight. If you're willing to look.

Rather than push a post apocalyptic story further along, Atwood cleverly goes for something far more luminous than that. The MaddAddam trilogy comes full circle. The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end. What?

Crakes are a post-Flood, trans-human, newly developed bio-species. Their consciousness could be characterized as innocent. Think of humans before the Biblical Fall. Truth is harsh, Crakes are not. When they become curious about their creators and plead for stories, humans are reluctant to tell.

To soften the historical truth, humans tell Crakes simple and fairytale-like stories. Godlike qualities and myths emerge about their creator and his associates. It's all snickers, smirks and by-goshes among the humans (and for us readers too) that the Crakes actually believe this stuff. And yet they do. To their core. We witness the origins of the Crakes' absolute truth and see their future faith beliefs and ritualistic practises in development. And so the cycle begins again.

Are the stories told to the Crakes any more plausible than the stories found in the Torah, Bible, and the Qur'an? Yet, billions of people accept such stories as absolute truth and place their faith in them. Die for them. Kill for them.

We are in a time of chaos. Whether it's called the Flood, Armageddon or a collapse of economy, environment and society together in a 'perfect storm,' is it inevitable?

With "MaddAddam," Atwood opens space for reflection. Are we ready to let go and inhabit a new maturity in our beliefs? One where we cease the search for and a connection with a supernatural creator-being who will parent us, take care of us, watch over and protect us. To let go of such ideas and create new stories--mature ones that facilitate a move from human childhood to human adulthood. To go beyond the absolute truth we believe in now.

Beyond our hopes and fears another truth exists.

In Oryx and Crake, we meet Jimmy (aka The Snowman), his friends the Crakers, and Oryx and Crake themselves. In The Year of the Flood, we meet God's Gardeners and learn more about the waterless flood, a world-wide epidemic that wipes out nearly the entire human race. In Maddaddam, Margaret Atwood completes her Maddaddam trilogy by bringing together the Crakers, the surviving God's Gardners, and the Maddaddamites, telling the story of their efforts to survive and preserve the human race, as radically different as it might turn out to be.

As the so-called waterless flood recedes, so to speak, these few survivors, whose lives have intersected extensively, come together to form a new community of sorts. The humans, some of whom worked for Crake, unknowingly assisting as he planned the release of the global virus, mix and mingle with the children of Crake. The Crakers, genetically engineered to be the next step in human evolution, and whose lives had been lived completely in an isolated biosphere, have had no contact with technology and human culture. As they learn and adapt to human ways, the humans see that the survival of human life may depend on the thriving of the Crakers.

As with the first two books in this trilogy, the science is interesting, but frequently not very convincing, based more on fancy than science. And the action of the story takes a back seat to the development of the characters and interactions of the groups. The flashbacks, especially those of Zeb, whose brother Adam One founded God's Gardeners, shed more light on events before the waterless flood.

Readers of the first two books in this trilogy will likely be thrilled with Maddaddam. I would recommend that you read Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood before you pick up Maddaddam. The series as a whole is intriguing, somewhat though-provoking, and memorable.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

(Spoilers, sure.) Put all three books together and you've got something over 1000 pages. And with maybe twenty pages to go in MaddAddam, you figure you're home free. The biggest conflict has been overcome, not without loss, but an emotionally bearable loss to the reader. But Atwood can't leave it alone. No, in that final twenty pages she gives the old rug a yank and makes you feel pretty lousy. It's a bit of a cheap trick, really, even if it's perfectly realistic and probably inevitable. I don't need the tables turned on me like that after I've lived through the difficult bit and come through still standing and dry-eyed.

Atwood does it her way. For the most part, MaddAddam depicts a perfectly pleasant end-of-world scenario. There's a lot of lolling about, very little grousing, lots of coffee-root drinking, a little goofing about with the purring, singing, grass-munching Crakers, plenty of off-screen sex - really, it seems quite attractive. There's even an alliance with the pigoons! In reality, if the world population was blighted down to about 15 geeks and one alpha male living in a cobb house and having lost everything else, the scenario would be grim beyond belief. Psychologically, never mind environmentally, nutritionally or medically, the effects would be devastating. The 15 would barely be functional, no matter what sort of prep they'd had. But right from the start, in Oryx and Crake, Atwood painted it rosy, presumably so that she could concentrate on other things, and not have to trudge through a sort of horrific, post-apocalyptic survivor tale. There's enough of that before the apocalypse.

Good enough. I quite enjoyed the story of Zeb and Adam and their father and the backstory filling in holes and leading to the present. Only the pesky painballers provided a dash of unpleasantness in this fairy-tale paradise, this otherwise hippy/science nerd daydream where Atwood pokes fun at pretty much everything. Seems a bit odd, at first. What if the painballers weren't there at all? What if Toby had overboarded them, as it were, when she had the chance? Would the novel then have been just a long reminiscence by Zeb, and a joyous reunion with Adam, and gently humorous education for the Crakers? Well, I guess the final 20 pages answer that.

Those final 20 pages, blast them, are the key to the entire trilogy, and wipe away any satire and goofiness.

I hate those pages.

I don't really know where to begin with this. As a ending book of a trilogy goes it ended appropriately. The storytelling is top notch and if you want to know the back story of Zeb or Adam One you will be very happy. I also loved (unlike some other reviewers) all the storytelling for the Crakers. I found it amusing and it made me smile (please stop singing).

However, if you were looking for a lot of forward acceleration in the story of what will happen to the human race, you will be sorely disappointed. I guess in a,way, it's a lot to ask asking for more plot when not much would happen in the first year of trying to rebuild the world but I kinda did.

Lastly, Toby Toby Toby why did you go from strong to jealous and lovesick.

When I started this book, I was super pumped. The two plot lines of The Year of the Flood and Oryx and Crake have converged! We are going to find out what happens to everyone! Action is going to happen! Something big will shake the foundations of everything that I know about this universe!!!!

Meh, and it was not to be.

This book revolves around Zeb and Toby and their romance, but also Zeb's past and his relationship to Adam One. While this story was interesting and did fill in a new piece of the puzzle leading up to the so called "Waterless Flood" it wasn't what I was looking for in this final volume. Instead of a vague drama where a new group of humans were struggling to survive in a harsh world and navigating interpersonal relationships, I wanted explosive action.

Zeb and Toby's romance did not seem plausible to me, despite the hints to it in The Year of the Flood. I just never bought it. Because of this I never fully got into the story. I was unmoved by the imminent danger of the Painballers and the Pigoons despite the egregious acts of violence committed. I'm glad I read this book to complete the saga and to see it through to the end, but most certainly was a sizzle instead of a band for a finale.

HOWEVER, I did laugh my ass off throughout at the Crakers questions and the story telling segments. I woke up my roommates laughing at 3am at the line "what is blue dicks?"

Please don't sing

This is such a tricky book to review - as the conclusion to the two works 'Oryx and Crake' and 'The Year of the Flood' that I enjoyed tremendously, I fell right back into the post-apocalyptic world that Atwood had created quite naturally. However, it was also inevitable that some unfair comparison would be made with its predecessors.

I would not recommend reading 'MaddAddam' on its own, even though there is a helpful synopsis of the two preceding works in the introduction. The complexity of Snowman-the-Jimmy's relationship with Crake/Glenn and Oryx cannot be comprehended without reading the first book, and Jimmy's strange role as the guardian of the Crakers would puzzle most readers.

While 'The Year of the Flood' was billed as a "simultaneoul" (or simultaneous sequel) to the first book, since the events of both books happened simultaneously and converged at the end of both books, 'MaddAddam' picks up from the pivotal ending and continues the story, focusing on Toby and Zeb, together with the ragamuffin group of bedraggled survivors the MaddAdamites, who try to form an uneasy commune with the posthumans, the Crakers. When the Crakers were introduced to us in 'Oryx and Crake', the peculiarity of their bio-enhanced traits (like insect-repellent skin, unproblematic mating rituals, and docile personalities, etc) might have enthralled the readers, but in this last book, their ineffective purring over physical injuries and relentless need to have the tales of Oryx and Crake told to them while constantly interrupting with their singing and questions, lose their charm for this reader, and becomes jarring, as Atwood, perhaps with self-conscious awareness, inserts as humorous asides in Toby's tales.

Plotwise, nothing much happens, besides keeping the two escaped Painballers (yet another cast ensemble that needs some prior introduction) at bay, while trying to protect their community, with allies that come from some unexpected quarters - rumps and snouts included. The frustrated romance between Toby and Zeb (which I found to be The Year of the Flood's weakest link) burrows its way back into the narrative, but perhaps as a way to introduce the backstory of Zeb and Adam One, so that the links between the storyworlds of the previous two books are bound more closely together.

Atwood's writing remains as incisive and her prose lively. The ponderous issues about what makes humans human that resound in the first two books are still present, though they are seen on a more personal level, even as Toby contemplates the old graffiti left behind on the walls of a biolet (lavatory): "What to eat, where to s***, how to take shelter, who and what to kill: are these the basics?... Is this what we've come to, or come down to; or else come back to?" Despite Crake's grand design for a super posthuman world, what goes round comes around, and around again.

"MaddAddam," the last book in Margaret Atwood's dystopian trilogy set in a world beset by predatory corporations, plague, and environmental disaster, is like one of those musicals in which everyone comes on stage for the final number. The characters from Oryx and Crake" (2003) are here, even Oryx and Crake themselves, if only in myth. The same is true for the characters from "The Year of the Flood,"(2009) although in the new novel Zeb now takes the lead. If you have not read the earlier books, forget about "MaddAddam" for a while.

Yes, Atwood does begin with a reprise, "The Story So Far," but it is not enough. I had read both of the earlier books, but still found myself frustrated by constantly trying to remember events from those novels. Atwood herself seem aware of the problem, as she regularly weaves in little reminders of the previous action. Finally in frustration, halfway through, I resorted to Wikipedia summaries of ""Oryx" and "Flood." That helped, and you may, like a student sneaking a peek at SparkNotes, find yourself doing the same.

The interesting thing about "MaddAddam" is that all of the "types" of the previous books--the Gardeners, the genetically engineered pacifist Crakers, the scientists, and the people, like Zeb, who move among these types, find themselves sharing the same refuge, along with a bunch of gene-spliced animals. It's rather like Noah's ark, except that the "flood," a pandemic, has already happened. In these tight quarters, as the inhabitants must get ready to defend themselves against the murderous Painballers, Atwood asks this question: what sort of world will arise from the remnant of humans and quasi-humans that still survives? Jealousy flourishes in the compound. Ethical debates (capital punishment, abortion) arise. Even as weeds and kudzu break apart the ruined cities, trees and shrubs commence flowering, and bees return to human hives, the humans themselves seem to be reproducing true to type----or maybe not, if one considers the interspecies cooperation that sets up the final battle.

"MaddAddam" ties up most of the loose ends from "Oryx" and "Flood," but it only makes sense if you read those two first.

M. Feldman

There is no one like Margaret Atwood. I almost exclusively read novels, but this trilogy is not like anything I have ever read. I'm not a fan of Cormac McCarthy and just last week finished "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel, when my library contacted me about "Madd Addam" being ready. After waiting over a year, I had high expectations. "Station Eleven" was so glorious I wondered if it was time for Ms. Atwood to hand over the dystopian crown. I wondered what more she could add to this story and if it would be fresh and if she would close this nightmare/love affair neatly. I feared that I would not remember much of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. I read a lot so I lose details quickly.
It did not take me long to remember all I needed to from the other two books and I almost immediately fell into the rhythm of Madd Addam. Unlike some reviewers I liked this book best. I thought it was brilliant from cover to cover and I am certainly going to be re-reading "O&C" and "TYOTF" in the next month. I want to put all the ends together while this story and climax are still fresh in my mind.
As long as Margaret Atwood is writing I will be reading her. She is incomparable. She is a genius and has tremendous wit about her literature. This book left me scrambling for more. Lucky for me she is so prolific and I will be investigating the other decades and stand alone novels soon and am expecting a wonderful ride.
Can one of the readers here please let me know what a liobam is? From the first book, I can't guess that one!
And for readers savy and curious enough for Ms. Atwood, give Emily St. John Mandel a chance too. You might just love her.

The reader on this audio was quite good, but I was really glad when this book ended. Perhaps I had read the first two books in this series too long ago, and the brief review in the first few pages was simply not detailed enough for me. While I will admit the story is unbelievably creative, I will also admit that for most of the book I was lost. I simply did not have the frame of reference I needed from the first two books, and like “Humpty Dumpty”, I could not put the story back together again.

I did find it to be a thought provoking story of a world in chaos, a story that raises the specter of a future in which we are destroyed by avarice and an endless craving for more and more power without regard to consequences. In this world, all that remains of civilization are small groups of humans, several species of animal and bio-engineered creatures. There are Crakers, G-d’s Gardeners, Maddaddamites, Pleeblands, Mo’Hairs, Snakewomen, Painballers, Pigoons, and Wolvogs, It is a time in which only the fittest will survive. The tools necessary to continue the life that once was, are absent, the resources to rebuild are missing and the technology is no longer known.

Crake wanted to end the chaos that existed in the world in which man worshipped at the Church of PetrOleum. He created a virus which he unleashed upon the world to rid it of all life. He created artificially intelligent beings called Crakers. They were gentle, loving, peaceful, kind and considerate. They would survive his plague to populate the earth, existing on leaves and vegetation only, living only for a predetermined, limited number of years. Unsophisticated, uneducated, unashamed, non-violent, unable to cause harm, they walked around unclothed, naked as the day they were created. They wore one skin while humans wore two (clothes)! They had enormous sex organs and seemed to exist only for their personal pleasure and to procreate. Unfortunately, not only these gentle people survived so violence was once again unleashed upon the land.

The story is told as one of the main characters, Toby, hands down the history of the past, by writing her boyfriend Zeb’s story and telling it to the crakers. His stories, which she relates with humor, are not always totally honest, but they are always told in a kind way that will not upset those she is addressing, the Crakers. Blackbeard, a Craker, inherits the job from her, and he continues to hand down the story, verbally, to the descendants and survivors, after Toby is gone. He tells Toby’s story. She taught him to write so he also makes a written copy for a more permanent record.

As with most books, of late, this one has a strong political message. Man is suffering the consequences of his abuse of the environment, his greed and his excessive wantonness. Humans have destroyed their world and now humans must try and restore it. The world is still a dangerous place. It is a situation in which survival of the fittest will be the order of the day. There may not be a time or a place for true justice for a long time. Expedience may have to be the rule of the day until a better situation is in place. Are those they fear dangerous, or are they dangerous merely because of their experiences? Can they be rehabilitated? Is it even feasible to do so with the conditions that exist? Is it safe to allow violence to remain? Do they have the wherewithal to maintain security if they try to rehabilitate some? These are problems that the fledgling society has to solve, in addition to providing food, health care, shelter, education, and most important, their ability to survive. The message in the book tends to be one of political correctness, subt;ly and obviously, pointing out how we, in the present, may cause our own demise in the future.

However, the book also contains an inordinate amount of brutality and vulgarity and, for me, an excessive concentration on weird sex. Perhaps it was the author’s intent to highlight these behaviors in order to exaggerate the environment that led to the chaos and to show why Crake chose to loose the plague upon the world. Perhaps it is the tool she used to illuminate the problems the world is actually experiencing today and to foreshadow the tragic end we may also bring down upon ourselves. Has the author offered us a parody of our own existence and our own world? Experiments with dangerous germs can fall into the wrong hands. Climate abuse may cause aberrations in the weather and the resultant floods and “unnatural” natural events may wreak havoc. Greed creates a “caste” system. Science creates ever more dangerous weapons and tools of war. In the end, Atwood shows us that the world, as we know it, has come to an end, and a new world has begun again. During this time, three women give birth to babies that are hybrids, for they are half-Craker. Perhaps the new civilization will be a combination of human and Craker traits and will, therefore, be a kinder and gentler race of people with the intelligence to advance and survive in a more congenial and peaceful world. Are we headed into the world of Oryx and Crake? It is a frightening thought.

The final book in the "MaddAddam" trilogy merges Oryx and Crake with the Year of the Flood in both style and storyline. Here Toby, Amanda, and Ren have joined a colony of the surviving God's Gardeners, bringing with them an unconscious Jimmy and his Craker followers. The present sections largely follow the point of view of Toby, who must now take up Jimmy's position as official storyteller and preacher to the Crakers.

The sermons and present day sections are interspersed with the story of Zeb, Toby's lover and God's Gardeners strongman. Zeb's story connects nearly every plot thread and character, and explains the origin of God's Gardeners, the plague "flood", and even how the group knew to prepare for this coming catastrophe. There's also a few new things added to Atwood's world of unchecked corporations, including a bizarre church that tries to use Christianity to justify fossil fuel consumption.

This was definitely a satisfying conclusion, wrapping both books together and closing all loose ends of the story, although there's definitely room for future installments. There's also an amusing new character, a curious little Cracker boy named Blackbeard, who latches onto a somewhat exasperated Toby. Maddaddam is a good book and a better read than Year of the Flood, even strengthening the previous installment.

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

What elevates Oryx and Crake (Book One), The Year of the Flood (Book Two), and now MaddAddam: A Novel (Book Three) above almost all sci-fi (or, as Atwood prefers, speculative fiction) is her inventive language and storytelling, and her ability to intermix the human proclivity for excess with a construction of a plausible future built directly on what corporations, governments, and scientists are imaging or developing presently. In the case of her trilogy, that is the exploration and manipulation of genes for profit, weaponry, and, in especially malicious or morally misguided hands, the eradication of humankind as we know it.

In MADDADDAM, Atwood picks up the story after the BlyssPlus epidemic has wiped out nearly, but definitely not, all of humankind. We remember that Crake in Book One, with a team of handpicked scientists, some of whom reappear in Book Three, created a new breed of hominoid attuned to nature and a sealed, protected environment for them, the Paradice dome or Egg. Secretly, he also engineered a deadly virus, hid it in BlyssPlus (similar to Brave New World's Soma), and, to use Craker mythology, cleansed the world for them of pesky competition. In Book Three, along with a few other surprises, we learn that's not entirely true; there's more to the story.

However, the world still contains humans, and of the worst sort, Painballers, trained in the pre-devastation world to kill for sport, men without souls who slaughter whatever they please, humans and animals, butchering and eating them. Confronting and eliminating these killers forms the main storyline in Book Three, along with bringing together characters from Books One and Two and showing how they establish a community and look to the future. If you've read the first two books, many of the characters will be familiar to you. The main group in Book Three are Zeb, Toby, Jimmy (Snowman), and a new addition, Bluebeard, a Craker child, a beacon of hope. As for the preceding books, Atwood supplies brief summaries of each as prologue to MADDADDAM, so even if you haven't read them you'll have a sense of what transpired.

Much of MADDADDAM consists of flashbacks to the time before the destruction. Atwood handles these in a most artful manner, having Toby, and later Bluebeard, relate them as a mythic belief system, a retelling in simplified words, pleasing to the Crakers. Many of the flashbacks are remembrances by Zeb. All serve to fill in and expand on the ground covered in Books One and Two, including Crake as a child, life in the Pleeblands, and the relationship of Zeb and Adam, Adam One, founder of God's Gardeners, and the boys' relationship with their father, founder of a debased version of Christianity, a mega church called PetrOleum, quite a nice invention on Atwood's part playing off the idea of the rock upon which Christ builds his church (Petros, ancient Greek for rock). Taken together, the three volumes provide a complete, multi-sided view of the world in the years shortly before Crake's manufactured extinction event.

Atwood casts a jaundiced eye on institutions. In her world, government has succumbed to powerful global super corporations, CorpSeCorps, HelthWyzer, OrganInc Farms, and the like. Packaged goods have been pushed to the extreme (SecretBurgers anyone?), animals gene spliced to meet market-created human needs (with plenty of unintended consequences, like thinking Pigoons), until there doesn't appear to be much of a natural world. These corporations aren't above perpetuating any nefarious act to spice their bottom lines, including manufacturing a disease and then a patented cure for it.

The current trend of wealth concentration in the hands of a few has reached its own extreme level in her world. An elite group of educated technocrats reside and work in corporate compounds (ironically, company towns of old re-imagined as posh conclaves), while the rest of the world battles it out in Pleebland. It's a nasty world of struggle, of pornographic pursuits, of bloodletting sports, a society on the make.

There's little solace or moral value in religion, either. How could there be in a world where a major religion is the Church of PetrOleum, the motto of which could easily be that quaint 2008 political shriek, "Drill, baby, drill!"?

But don't fear; Atwood doesn't preach. She simply presents a world and human society dashed to hell by an overly enthusiastic quest for the good life, the life of materialistic depravity. Highly recommended book and series.

Also, if you haven't already, you'll want to pick up a copy of Atwood's masterful, insightful, and fearsome The Handmaid's Tale. It is among her best and, in my opinion, ranks with the great dystopian novels that include BRAVE NEW WORLD and 1984 (Signet Classics).

In MADDADDAM, Margaret Atwood returns to the terrifying vision of the future she first imagined in ORYX AND CRAKE and further explored in THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD, concluding this spectacular trilogy. In it, she examines the fragility of nature, the dangers of power, the risks of science, and the meaning and limits of humanity.

It has been a few months since the pandemic called the Waterless Flood devastated most of life on earth. A few people have survived, along with a variety of genetically modified animals and a strange new human species called the Crakers. ORYX AND CRAKE told the story of the scientific genius Crake, his muse Oryx, and their plans to create a new race of people who lack destructive impulses. THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD told the story of Adam One, a religious leader who tried to bring his followers comfort and hope during the pandemic that Crake unleashed on the world, and of Toby and Ren, two women who were victims of the brutality and malfeasance that characterized society's breakdown.

MADDADDAM brings those stories together in the aftermath of the violence of the Waterless Flood and the corruption-filled decades that led up to it by centering on Toby and a few other characters from the first two books. Toby, having survived the pandemic holed up in the AnooYoo Spa, has joined survivors from both the Gardeners, the nature-focused religious group founded by Adam One, and the MaddAddamites, bio and tech geniuses who formed an underground resistance against the nefarious CorpSeCorps. The Crakers, bio-engineered humans with a simplistic worldview but lusty sexual appetites, are also on-hand, having followed Jimmy, a friend of Crake's from the Paradice Dome where they were created and Crake perished. But they are all far from safe as raping and murdering Painballers are circling their barely protected compound, and Pigoons, pigs bred for human organ and tissue replacement, are menacing them as well.

Of course, it all sounds confusing if you haven't read the first two books, so losing yourself in Atwood's nightmarish and intelligent world from start to finish is recommended. MADDADDAM exhibits the clever word play and mistrust of science and technology for profit and power that Atwood began presenting in the other installments of the trilogy, as well as another one of the author's characteristic subjects: the treatment of women. Toby is a strong and sympathetic character, and through her and her lover, Zeb, Atwood is able to fill in a lot of the holes in the story the other books didn't address. Here we find out the backstory of Adam One and his relationship to Zeb, along with Zeb's own tale and what has happened to the Children of Crake since they left the Paradice Dome. We also catch up with Ren and Amanda, who were important figures in THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD.

Most interesting in this book, however, is not the characters dealing with the new world in which they find themselves (though that is really great, too), but the development of the Craker character named Bluebeard, who comes to stand for all Crakers as they come out of the Eden of their creation into a harsh and unpredictable climate. Also especially interesting is the theme of storytelling. MADDADDAM is mostly Toby's story, but she tells Zeb's as well (to the Children of Crake, who in turn make storytelling part of their own culture), and in the end, she, with the help of Bluebeard, has left a story as a legacy and as a guide for the survivors of the Waterless Flood. Myth and mythmaking are important to any culture, and Atwood uses that idea to say something about survival and regeneration being more than purely physical processes.

MADDADDAM concludes one of the most compelling and unique visions of the future (and the present, really) in recent literature. It is about extinction and dissolution, as well as reparation and restructuring. It is a novel not without hope but is a hope tinged with uncertainty and anxiety. Sometimes far-fetched and other times bleakly realistic, Atwood's latest is a fascinating and entertaining conclusion to her chilling series.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

`MaddAddam' is the final volume in the near future dystopian trilogy that started with `Oryx and Crake' and continued with `The Year of the Flood'. While the events in the first two novels about the end of the world as we know it took place at the same time, albeit with different casts of characters, `MaddAddam' moves us forward in time and unites the two sets of characters. Jimmy, once Crake's best friend, now deathly ill with an infection, is in the care of the remnants of God's Gardeners, an ecological/religious group, who also find themselves the caretakers of the Craker's, those innocent, leaf eating people who Crake created as replacements for the fatally flawed human race. The group is also imperiled by two of the Painballers- former prisoners who earned their freedom in gladiator style fights that burned out their ability to feel empathy and left them with a huge appetite for torture- who are lurking in the forest that surround their home and garden. An even bigger peril they face is the fact that food and other supplies are rapidly running out; it's getting harder and harder to find anything useful in the remnants of the city, and they have no ideas how to survive in Stone Age conditions.

While the plot that moves the book along is how the group deals with the Painballers, it really doesn't take up much of the text. The majority of the story is Zeb's history: how he and his brother (who became MaddAddam) grew up tortured by their father, the head of the Church of PetrOleum; and the close calls he had after running away. This history serves to tell us about how the world right before the apocalypse was functioning.

It's a horrific world that God's Gardeners and the rest inhabit, but t he real horror is that humans already possess the technology to make all the creatures in this book, including the deadly diseases that wipe out humanity and the Painballers with their inability to care about anyone other than themselves. We are already on the course of megacorporations taking over our lives and government. Ice caps are already melting and permafrost thawing. The gap between rich and poor widens.

`MaddAddam' is brilliantly written and serves as a warning about the path we're headed down. But it's not preachy; it's a damn good adventure story. My only complaint was with the character of Toby; in `Year of the Flood' she is an incredibly strong person, focused and capable. In `MaddAddam', we witness her relationship with Zeb turning her into an insecure, jealous woman, tortured by doubts about Zeb's feelings for her and whether he is having sex with other women- especially one who is putting on a display of her sexual readiness for all the males of the camp. This bothered me a lot to see Toby reduced to this state, but later I wondered: was she written like this to compare her to the Crakers, who have no sexual jealousy? Or to show that in a situation where the world has ended and must be rebuilt, the fertile woman is reduced to her ability to repopulate the world? Or perhaps just that no matter what happens in the larger world, human beings will be human beings. I don't know, but I found it very irritating.

The best part of the book is the way that big parts of it are told by Toby to the Crakers in their nightly story time. You only hear Toby's voice; what the Crakers are saying and doing is implied by her answers. I found their naivety funny and felt sympathy for Toby's frustration with their incessant questions. One of the most surprising things in the book is who became the allies of the God's Gardeners in the end.

While it wasn't the most satisfying conclusion, it's still a very good book. It's a standalone novel and has a `the story so far' section in the front, but I recommend reading the first two volumes before this one.

This was a great wrap up to the series. We learned more about the nature of the crackers, the pigoons and got more of the back story of the characters to understand them better and the issues that the characters were facing in the series were resolved or answered.
I am the type of reader that enjoys a good surprise in the story and the only thing that I wasn't a fan of was the last quarter of the book. I didn't like how the story would flip from present to future and because of that the outcome was revealed early which I felt that it took away from the buildup of anticipation. Once the outcome was revealed I was like really?!? It was like a mild spoiler of the story in the story.
The book continues on with a few more chapters kind of like an encore to the ending which was a nice final touch. If you enjoy sci-fi, this series is worth a read.

It has been a few years since I read the other two books in this trilogy, but in those I remember a kind of broader scope, and a suspense, as in "will he/can he really?" after we know the answer to that, this last book leaves us with a tighter view of the proceedings. This is Margaret Atwood's writing, so of course it is wonderful, however I would not be honest if I said I thought as wonderful as the first two. In spite of the closer views of fewer people, there is a what seemed to me a bit of a lack of focus in this one. Perhaps I could add how the first two books meshed, and this one, while not the red headed step-child of the three, doesn't carry the same resonance. Somewhere in among Zeb's telling of his life story to Toby, I found myself getting a little restless. And things at the very end, (without giving it all away) seemed inconclusive in some ways. It certainly did not end devoid of hope, but there was sadness, unavoidably. Still, compared to Oryx and Crake and After the Flood, this one was more of a let down. While I don't seem to have the time presently, I feel the whole trilogy may deserve to be re-read together. This review has been difficult to write because the first two were SO stellar, I find it hard to say that this could be anything less.

Before I read this book I read or reread "Oryx and Crake" and "The Year of the Flood". If I hadn't I don't know that I'd have understood or been as interested in "MaddAdam". It's not a stand alone book in my opinion. I thought the trilogy overall was good though I'd rate "Oryx" three stars and "Flood" as five stars. "MaddAdam" had some great parts and some slow parts, mostly the sections where Atwood `told' rather than showed the action. The parts concerning the storytelling to the Crakers especially drags however try and be patient with it because there are some important plot elements imbedded in the stories. Atwood is a Goddess of metaphors and she out did herself throughout these books in that area. The implications will have your mind spinning.

I haven't read a lot of the kid focused dystopia lit that's popular right now but compared to the ones from that genre that I have read this is vastly more mature and complicated and believable. In fact some of it is just a shade off what has happened or could happen in our current world which is what makes it so good. It's just matter of degree. As always Atwood's viewpoint is first of all human but also feminist though she isn't strident. Toby, the main female character in this book, is an example of that. She's concentrated on staying alive but also in being fully human which includes love for her partner and for the larger group. I loved the bee lore that's sprinkled throughout the book. Zeb, Toby's lover, is a study in contrast. He's a big, manly man who carries a big stick. Consequently it's comforting to have him around in this end of the world scenario. A satisfying conclusion to this series.

Maddaddam is the third in Atwood's near future apocalypse series began in Oryx And Crake and continued in The Year Of The Flood. While it was remarkably enjoyable to return to Atwoods future and to catch up again with familiar characters, Maddaddam is somewhat of a let-down when compared to its predecessors and should certainly not be approached as the first read if you are new to Atwood.

So if Oryx and Crake is the masterpiece, the creation and realisation of (yet another) dystopian future and Year of the Flood essential and riveting padding exploring the surrounding characters to those in O&C, then Maddaddam is an epilogue, a brief round up of loose threads. In fact Maddaddam reads almost as prologue to a presumed far future fourth novel. Little happens, seeds are sown that makes me think revisiting this world in 100 or 500 years time would be far more enjoyable than simply continuing in almost linear fashion the story of Year Of The Flood. The stories of Zeb and Adam still leave a lot of holes. Zeb's incredible back story is skimmed over almost casually as a lovers rite of bonding rather than dramatic event. And Adam's holier than holy creation and exploitation of God's Gardeners is barely examined.

That said i did enjoy Maddaddam. Toby is an insecure but kind hearted heroine and the Crakers as confusing and innocent as always. Their rites, the Pigoons and the gradual reclamation of normality are what drive this novel rather than anything peculiarly dramatic. Both O&C and YotF had the world ending plague as dramatic impetus but Maddaddam is more insular and as such it's problems a whole lot less seismic.

An interesting but unnecessary third act.

This is the third book in a series about a small group of survivors of a worldwide plague. This book, like the previous two ("Oryx and Crake" and "The Year of the Flood") are fun to read (or listen to) and highly recommended for sic-fi buffs. Although occasionally dark, the stories generally move along at a pleasing clip. The characters are interesting, the arc of the story makes sense, with delightful surprises all along the way, and I think author Margaret Atwood's writing is entertain, witty, and sharp.
I would strongly recommend reading this particular series in the order written. It will make much more sense, as events are referred to from earlier segments in this book. This is reading for the fun of it.

'Maddaddam' is the last book of the Maddaddm trilogy and, surprisingly, it is clearly the worst of the bunch. All of the creativity shown in the first two books seem to have fizzled out in this last book, which strikes me merely as a narrative to close up loose ends. I actually found it to be rather boring, a shock since Margaret Atwood is ordinarily a wonderful writer. But in this book the prose is flat, uninspiring. And as for the plot, it's basically an extension of the other books that describe a post-apocalyptic world with few survivors living alongside mutant critters.

Bottom line: surely those who've read the first two books in the series will want to read this. I just hope they aren't as disappointed as I was.

If you have not read Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, you must before reading Maddaddam. It isn't my favorite of the series but only because I think it does not stand alone as strongly as the other two. Oryx and Crake introduced us to two fascinating characters that set up the event for their end. In The Year of the Flood, we see the world they lived in and the results of the said event from several different prespectives. Maddaddam is a look back through the eyes of Zeb. In Year of the Flood, Zeb is an enigma. He was not like the others and a shady past was alluded to. While his background makes for an interesting story, there were moments when I wondered how this was integral to the rest. At times it seems like he was the one to tie the other characters together. But it was done almost too neatly. What are the chances that the survivors are all linked? And there are glimpses of Adam but he remains shrouded in mystery, which may have been Atwood's intent. But why reveal one side of the story and not the other? (I realize this question may not make sense if you haven't read the book but I hate to give away too much.)

Margaret Atwood creates a post-apocalyptic world that is terrifying mostly because it is all too close to our near future - the scientific advances, the experiments, the mass consumerism, the lack of privacy. It can be taken as a cautionary tale but I enjoyed it more because to me, it was a satirical commentary on our society. Weeks later, I am still thinking about it. Do we learn from our mistakes? Is the need for history, oral and written, only human? And what about our need for an explanation of where we came from, a god to worship and attribute to all things?

Margaret Atwood claims not be be a science fiction writer; preferring the term "speculative fiction" and if she wishes not be be associated with us low-lifes who wallow in scifi...so be it. As far as I'm concerned she is one of the best in our much-maligned genre. I've read all of the Oryx and Crake triogy...an apocalyptic vision of the much-too-near future. She is much more hopeful in her view than even she would like to suppose. I found Margaret Atwood when I read "The Blind Assassin", a novel I found extraordinaryly well-written, with just enough scifi to keep me into it. It's really an old-fashioned thriller in its way, but the mood and sense of place are so finely drawn that I knew I'd found a new author.

This trilogy is much more straightforward and while the events which take place are horiffic, the tone is less frightening than "The Blind Assassin". Atwood's sense of humor, her dark view of the human race, and her deft vision of the imminent dangers of the technologies we pursue are much in evidence here. The characters are less engaging; perhaps less personal as somehow I found the characters in Blind Assassin perhaps closer to Atwood's personal experience (I hope not.) Atwood clearly understands the implications of our harnessing the genome for our use, and foresees as do I the horrors which very likely will plague our children. It's a brave new world.

This trilogy is really one book; so read them in order. It's great.

"MaddAddam" is the conclusion of a trilogy, which began with "Oryx and Crake" and continued with "The Year of the Flood." While I strongly recommend that you read both books before you attempt "MaddAddam" because they are worth the effort and reading them will help you fully comprehend the conclusion. You do not have to do so, though, because Atwood has very thoughtfully included a summary of the two prequels upfront called, "The Story So Far."

I once said "The Handmaid's Tale" was the most terrifying books I have ever read. That includes King, Poe, and Lovecraft, by the way. Well, Atwood stepped up her game with this trilogy. The best horror (and dystopic sci-fi) takes current headlines and permutes them to your worst nightmares. "MaddAddam" is the culmination of corporate greed, abuse of humanity and genetic manipulation.

"MaddAddam" is not a book that I would take lightly. It's a responsibility to read works like these because once Ms. Atwood opens your eyes to the possibilities of what could happen, you need to consider what kind of world you want to leave to the next generations, then step up and get informed about what is going on and do something to effect the kind of change you want to see in the world.

I would include Margaret Atwood in a list of the finest authors I have ever read. Her work is moving and evocative and will leave you changed. Leave time to read this book in a place where you can think and react.

Oryx and Crake

The Year of the Flood

Rebecca Kyle, September 2013

I'm a big fan of Margaret Atwood. he quality of her prose, her characters, and her imagination is such that she writes some of the few realistic, contemporary tales that I'm happy to read, but I think she's at her best when she's writing full-blown science-fiction with a literary edge. While the Handmaid's Tale is probably the best known example of this, I actually prefer Oryx and Crake and its sequel, the Year of the Floor. The series presents one of the most intriguing and well-developed futuristic dystopias I've ever come across, combined with an interesting plot set both before and after the plague deliberately designed to wipe out humanity and replace it with a race of genetically modified perfect beings.

Oryx and Crake dealt with the upper-echelons of society and the scientific genius who created the plague and the new humans, while Year of the Flood told the interlocking story of the underclass and the God's Gardeners environmentalist cult. The two books worked well together to fill in each other's blanks, give various different perspectives on the world and the plot, and create a fully rounded universe. I was therefore unsure what else this third book could add.

As with the earlier books, MaddAddam presents both a linear narrative of life after the "Waterless Flood" for the handful of survivors, and flashbacks to life in the pre-plague world of genetic engineering, stark class divides and armed corporations.

The "modern-day" sections focus on Toby, who is holed up with a combination of God's Gardeners, former MaddAddam affiliates, a (mostly unconscious) Jimmy from the first book, and a large group of Crakers, the new humans, to whom she tells selective stories of the past as a sort of creation myth. The focus is on the story-telling sessions, on the group defending themselves against Painballers and the world's strange man-made animals, (though there is very little action), and on Toby's relationship with Zeb. The storytelling concept and the development of the Crakers was interesting, but otherwise, these sections, while redeemed by Atwood's writing skills and characterisation, were ultimately quite dull.

The storytelling sessions and Toby's diary, which ultimately become a sort of Bible, are well done, playing with ideas of folklore, origin stories and the development of a shared culture. Though this premise was intriguing, I ultimately felt it was a little laboured and overdone. Constant Craker interruptions and misunderstandings of Toby's stories became trying when I just wanted to immerse myself in the tale, and the sections told by the Crakers felt a little twee. Cloud Atlas did a similar thing much more succinctly and subtly, by showing how one character's police interview became a religious text in the future. Still, I'm a firm believer that there shouldn't be a solid divide between literary and genre fiction, so it's refreshing to see such complex ideas being explored in this sort of story.

The best parts of the book were the flashbacks. The dystopian world is so well developed that it's fascinating to spend time there. That said, I didn't feel that these sections, focussed on Zeb and Adam One this time, added much to what readers have seen in earlier books. Zeb has lots of adventures, but doesn't really seem to do much. And while it's heavily implied that Adam is heavily embroiled in various plots, I was no clearer on his actual role in events by the end.

In essence, I don't think this book needed to be written in order to make this a complete series, and I don't think it's as good as its predecessors. That said, the writing, the imagination on display and the fascinating world still make it a pleasure to read, and I raced through it, complex ideas about storytelling and exciting tales of fights with mutant bears alike. I'd definitely recommend to fans of the author and the series, and if you haven't read the earlier books yet, do so now. If you have, a quick re-read may be in order - at times I struggled to remember the details of earlier plots and it would be interesting to see how they all merge together.

I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as the first two. Oryx and Crake was by far the best in the series, a masterpiece of science fiction and the dystopian future for an adult audience when the YA genre has been so dominant in that field. This series is the first I've read by Atwood and her storytelling skills are top notch. The issue I had with this book (which I should have suspected by the title but didn't) is that it is the story of MaddAddam aka Jeb. I just wasn't very interested in Jeb. His presence in the previous books was side plot to me and I didn't realize he was going to come front line. His history, although well written and beautifully integrated into the established plot lines, just didn't interest me. I also expected a bigger finale. Atwood ends several story lines very abruptly and doesn't really paint a picture of what the future will bring. I would have liked more closure from the series. So 3 stars, but if you read the first 2 books it's definitely a must read.

A trilogy's ending most often meanders and requires diligence on the part a reader. Atwood's conclusion is no exception. Be prepared to discover her brilliance in achievement: blending the untold stories of older characters into the story of raising up a new society, to include the surprising rise of the Pigoons. In my humble opinion Atwood is this era's most imaginative author, all the while giving voice to concerns of eerily possible futures.

If you haven't read Oryx and Crake or The Year of the Flood, you should do so before reading this book, or this little review, as it may contain spoilers.

A small group of humans and "Crakers", genetically modified humanoid beings created by Crake, have survived the devastating plague that has wiped out much of humanity. This book picks up right where The Year of the Flood left off and deftly weaves together the stories from those two books into one cohesive, fascinating whole.

I didn't read Oryx and Crake when it first came out; I actually only read it because I got The Year of the Flood as a review copy. But I've been entranced throughout by the way that Atwood has constructed this particular post-apocalyptic world. I admired the world-building in the first book and the characterization of the second; MaddAddam combines these two aspects. These few remaining people are creating a new reality and new myths to support that reality. The past is important, but which elements of the past get remembered? It's a key question in this novel as we watch what the characters to do to pass on those myths to future generations.

I'd highly recommend all three of these books; I actually suspect they'd be best read together in one go, which I didn't manage to do. But however you read them, make sure you don't miss this excellent trilogy.

First of all, I thought I'd read "The Year of the Flood" but I soon found that no, I'd made some mistake somewhere, though I've read "Oryx and Crake" several times as it was my favorite Atwood book for some time. So, if you haven't read "The Year of the Flood" I think one will do okay, though I MUST read it! You do have to have read Oryx and Crake or there's not much point.
Margaret Atwood... her gentle and sad (and sometimes to me, useless, bland to the point of invisibility) characters and their lives, this is another of her books in her unique style, the third in her series and to me maybe having more hope than some of her books, some of them leave me feeling satisfied but depressed, this book is actually a bit more about HOPE... one never knows what is going to happen in life and in a book till one turns the page... there can be hope....
This series seems to be a little bit of a bridge, if you don't like Atwood this may be a series that you can like, it's like a bridge to more science fictiony writing, but still with her soft but unsubtle social criticism/commentary, this series has that and is even less subtle, it's blatant social commentary. But Oh well... from "A Handmaid's Tale" she is KNOWN for that.
So, Oryx and Crake was one of my favorites of hers, this is almost as good... I'd definitely recommend it, one needs to read the third in the series!

The human population has been decimated. Plant life is thriving, as are the genetically engineered animals that the labs had been working on at the end.

A small band of people, some of whom had belonged to the Earth-friendly Gardeners' cult, and some of whom had worked in the labs, has survived the mass infection and now comes together to protect each other and form a community. They take under their wings the Crakers, the genetically engineered people Crake created to be the perfect innocents to inherit the Earth once he had succeeded in killing everyone else off.

There are some dangerous people and animals about, though. This varied group must figure out how to survive in this new reality.

I liked seeing another aspect of the story started in "Oryx and Crake." It was nice to have parts of the story fleshed out that hadn't been clear from the first two books. The stories told by Toby that showed the development of the Crakers' religion were excellent, too. I loved the parts that showed the ways their minds worked. Even with so much information, I still wanted more, though. I would have liked some glimpses of what was happening in the rest of the world.

Early on in the long-awaited conclusion to her MaddAddam trilogy, Margaret Atwood writes:

"There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too."

And in MaddAddam, at last, Ms. Atwood gives us all of the above.

It's been a decade since I first read Oryx and Crake, and four years since I read The Year of the Flood. I loved both books, loved the way the two intertwined and complemented each other. So, in preparation for this final volume, I started by rereading the first two novels of the trilogy. Wow, oh wow, did they hold up well! I realize that not all readers have the time or inclination to revisit books they've already read, but in this case it was well worth the extra effort, if only to fully appreciate the connections between the three novels. I don't believe that a trilogy was planned when Ms. Atwood wrote Oryx & Crake, and yet it was almost as if she had salted away loose ends a decade ago as part of some subconscious, brilliant master plan. For those who aren't inclined to follow my suit, MaddAddam helpfully opens with a four-page summary entitled, "The Story So Far." Personally, I wouldn't consider reading this final volume without having first read the prior two at some point.

When last we visited with the God's Gardeners, it was the post-pandemic Year of the Flood. We'd been on a harrowing journey narrated through the eyes and voices of two Gardeners, Toby and Ren. In MaddAddam, Toby is back as narrator, and while Ren is a secondary character in the novel, I have to admit that I missed her voice. This time around, the tale is told by Toby alone until late in the novel a surprising second narrative voice emerges.

And it's appropriate that Toby tells the tale, because it is primarily (Finally!) the story of Zeb, a man that Toby has secretly desired for years. Up until now, Zeb has been an enigmatic character, always hard to pin down. In MaddAddam, it becomes clear that Zeb's history is inextricably linked to that of Adam One and the God's Gardeners, as well as that of Crake and the Crakers.

But in addition to looking backward, the story of Toby, Zeb, Snowman, the God's Gardeners, the Crakers, and the "MaddAddamites" who engineered them, moves forward. The whole bunch of them are joined in an uneasy community. The Crakers are an alien intelligence. Says one of the MaddAddamites, "Their brains are more malleable than Crake intended. They've been doing several things we didn't anticipate during the construction phase." Amen to that! There are many unexpected complications of joining humans and Crakers together, many of them quite comic. The comic relief is welcome, because Atwood's post-apocalyptic future is dark. Of all the Craker characters, there is really only one who stands out, a young boy christened Blackbeard. He befriends Toby, and is, simply put, adorable. He is also the entrée for readers into the Craker mind. Can it possibly be accurate to say he "humanizes" them?

There are many dangers facing this little tribe. Probably the most aggressive threat is that of the Painballers--escaped prisoners who have all but lost their humanity. The matter of humanity is, I think, central to this tale because if humanity is to be measured among the characters, it's a broad spectrum. The Gardeners and their allies are a fairly admirable bunch, trying to live in peace, sustainably, and protect the Crakers. While the Crakers have some extraordinary natural defences and abilities, left to their own devices in this harsh world, these childlike beings would surely perish. The Painballers are entirely human, but have regressed to an almost animalistic state. And then there are the pigoons--the enormous, genetically-engineered pigs that have acquired an unknown degree of human intelligence in addition to the transplant organ-compatibility they were designed for. The pigoons are a threat to all constituencies, and in MaddAddam, we learn a great deal more about these animals.

I can only write so much here, and yet it is a testament to Ms. Atwood's epic achievement with this final volume that there is so much substance contained within a mere 416 pages. I want to discuss the role of mythology and written language within this tale, the allegorical elements, the cyclic nature of the story being told, and the connectedness of all things. And, I want to quote her at length, for the sheer intelligence of her thoughts, and the beauty of her expression of them. Truly, I could go on and on.

She has given us the story, the real story, and how it came to be told. Ms. Atwood has looked into our future with this trilogy. She has extrapolated trends in our culture today and carried them into a worst possible tomorrow. Her work is disturbing because her vision is undeniable. Different readers will get different messages from this tale, and will take away different lessons. Despite the darkness, I am left with a feeling of hope. And a very strong impulse to start talking with the bees.

It takes a long time to get through an audiobook, what with all those pauses and feelings the voice actors insert. Novels for the ears became just when I needed when I decided it was time to workout a bit more than not at all. After teaching Oryx and Crake last fall, I decided it was good to listen to The Year of the Flood before I forgot everything I knew about the complex characters and world Atwood created. Of course, it was my Facebook feed that led me to realize MaddAddam had just come out in September, and if I waited to listen to it, if I put it in the queue, I would forget all of book two. These are long books, people. And thus began my month-long journey with MaddAddam.

MaddAddam picks up right where The Year of the Flood left off. Atwood is good and ending her books in this series with characters about to enter the frame, but we don't know who or perhaps why. This time, it's the Crakers who are coming to help Ren, Toby, and Jimmy who are trying to rescue Amanda from two Painballers. Atwood takes readers both back into Zeb's and Adam One's past and forward into the war between humans/Crakers/pigoons and Painballers....

Read the rest at Grab the Lapels!

[...]

At the opening of this book, the survivors of the plague, or "waterless flood", as some called it, are learning to live together - the humans and the genetically engineered "crakers". At the same time, the survivors must fortify against some violent rivals and the genetically engineered animals of the area. Gentle and trusting, the crakers demand nightly stories and the job falls to Toby, the main viewpoint character of this book (previously one of the main viewpoint characters of _The Year of the Flood_). The crakers' need to believe in beautiful myths is poignant, and Toby's attempts to tell them things in ways that are both believable and acceptable to them is sometimes humorous. At the same time, she is told stories by her lover Zeb, covering his back history and telling of some of the incidents of the previous books from yet another point of view.

The events, places and people of the three books are woven together. Some things are still unanswered to me, or perhaps I'm not reading between the lines. I read the first two books when they came out, and on finishing this, I have the desire to read them again, to refresh my memory and see things in a new light.

Wonderful! All the characters from the first two books come together in this final book of the trilogy which moves the plot forward showing us the present situation of the world and how the remaining humans and the genetically altered humans and animals are existing together. The second book, The Year of the Flood, is the weakest in the trilogy but I very much enjoyed those characters' return in this story. They were familiar faces and their characters were wonderfully developed in this book. It was also fantastic to finally get to know the "Crakers" so well, and a very important character develops from that group. Tension comes from the threat of three Painballers, gladiator-type survivors from a fight-to-the-death reality show, pre-Apocalypse. I was pleased to find no heavy emphasis on the eco-nonsense here and found Atwood's vision of her post-apocalyptic world quite plausible. I always enjoy Atwood's writing whether I'm thrilled with her books or not and this one is a page-turner that kept me glued to the book. I still think Oryx and Crake is the best of the trilogy, but this is a satisfying conclusion to the story.

I'll begin with a contentious statement: I think Margaret Atwood is our greatest living novelist. She introduced more than one generation of American readers to the largely unexplored world of Canadian literature, and her 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale is rightfully given a lofty place on the shelf alongside the likes of Orwell and Huxley. Over the course of her nearly half-century career, she has amassed an impressive body of work that ranks her amongst the all time greats. Any attempt I make at critiquing a Margaret Atwood novel is done with the understanding that I am comparing it mostly in relative terms, holding it against the standard set by the rest of her canon.

MaddAddam, probably the most eagerly anticipated novel of Atwood's career, is the final chapter in her dystopian trilogy that began with 2003's Oryx and Crake and left off with 2009's The Year of the Flood. Rather than a plot unfolding in successive chronological sequence, the first two books in the series told parallel coterminous stories of the events leading up to the collapse of human civilization. The structure was interesting, and proved ultimately more satisfying than George R.R. Martin's attempt at using similar techniques with A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons. As with any final piece of a trilogy, MaddAddam has a lot of work to do in terms of tying up loose ends and appeasing the often unrealistically high expectations of fans while also working as a novel in its own right.

MaddAddam succeeds, but, unusually for an Atwood novel, I wasn't entirely certain of its merits until the final few pages. Although Toby once again takes primary narration duties here, chronicling the day to day life of the world's surviving humans as they struggle to survive in the immediate aftermath of a societal collapse in a new world they now share with the "Crakers" , much of the book is spent on the backstory of Zeb, and one's interest in this particular character will factor heavily into one's enjoyment of the novel. That Zeb's story is masterfully written goes without saying -- Atwood's prose has a confidence to it that I love and admire, a voice that is clearly and unmistakably her own: wry, sharp, and direct. It's without comparison, although I can possibly stretch to say that it has something in common with Shirley Jackson if Jackson had decided that she no longer cared about what anyone thought of her, stopped being afraid of the villagers, and wrote with a bit more freedom. The problem is never with the writing (Margaret Atwood's grocery list would probably be a more captivating read than the majority of novels currently in print, and she would somehow make the choice between two different brands of yogurt seem like a haunting tale of alienation that examines the crippling limitations of the human spirit). The problem, for me, is that I was so invested in the story she has built around the people I already care about in this world that I wanted less of Zeb and was preoccupied with that classic question that burns at the core of all good literature: what happens next?

Atwood keeps us asking this question, and when answers do eventually come, they are satisfying. On our way there, we get to see Toby -- a classic Atwoodian protagonist -- wrestle with the personal struggles of aging, jealousy, vanity, and anxiety, against the larger struggles of the post-apocalyptic world that make her feel frustrated by what she views as her own frivolity. Toby is strong, and much of her strength comes from the fact that she perceives herself as weak.

This is a weird novel, and it's refreshing to see a writer so deeply into a career continue to experiment with different kinds of storytelling. Atwood uses an interesting technique here to bring us into this world. The Crakers (a biologically engineered humanoid species created by genius/mad scientist Crake as an experiment in correcting all of humanity's flaws), abandoned and left to die in a lab after the death of Crake and the rest of mankind, are rescued by Jimmy, whom they come to view as a sort of messiah figure. When Jimmy becomes ill, it is Toby who has to assume his duties as storyteller. The Crakers possess a childlike curiosity about their own history as well as the stories of the surviving humans, and the fact that much of the the novel is written as an oral history gives it an unexpectedly mythic quality that wasn't present in the earlier two books. We join the Crakers as Toby's audience, and there is something strange and effective about hearing the stories of our species -- our strengths, our weaknesses, and our eventual downfall -- from this perspective.

The novel also surprised me with its humor -- Atwood's novels are always infused with a dry wit, but this is probably the funniest of her career. The cultural misunderstandings between the two surviving sentient species provide a backdrop not only for laughs (the Crakers come to understand the f-word as a deity to be called upon in times of need), but also as a way of learning more about both. It also serves as a brilliant way to make us question much of what we take for granted as "fact". There were times where I nearly felt as impatient as Toby herself about wanting to get through to the rest of the story, but these scenes are so well written that it doesn't matter.

MaddAddam poses many questions about how best to rebuild a society that is forced to go back to its roots and start over again. Atwood offers some complex and multifaceted ideas to the reader -- there are times where the world of MaddAddam seems to renounce all science and genetic engineering in favor of a more simple return-to-nature lifestyle, yet it is precisely the results of what occurred in those labs that give us our greatest hope for our salvation from the destruction and chaos they brought about in the first place. There are also questions posed about the role of storytelling and myth-making and what defines us as "human". Yet despite the heaviness of the subject and the philosophical and ethical questions it brings, Atwood never moralizes, and infuses the entire novel with enough of her signature wit and self deprecating humor to make it a delight to read. Interestingly, the apocalypse is never exactly mourned or lamented -- when these characters yearn for the past, it's mostly matters of convenience and comfort that they are missing, and one gets the sense that humanity really did need a good culling.

It is a bleak future that Atwood paints -- a world where both the coffee AND the chocolate crops have failed is not one that I have any interest in ever seeing -- and throughout this series our species does not always appear in its best light. However, as the novel reaches its final pages, Atwood leaves us with some sense of hope and redemption. "The waterless flood" has cleansed the Earth of most of our past sins, and although the chance that we will be doomed to repeat history is ever present, she offers us the possibility that things -may- be different. It is not a starry-eyed and sententious hope -- Atwood is way too wry and pragmatic for that -- but it is a realistic, cautious hope. And despite parts of the novel leaving me hungry for -more-, it is a wonderful message to take away from what is ultimately a satisfying end to this powerful and unforgettable trilogy. Rating: A-

@robrussin

(feel free to comment below and tell me why I'm wrong about my first sentence)

Margaret Atwood's finale to her dystopian trilogy, which began with Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood,is very much in the same vein as its predecessors. MaddAddam paints a grim picture, but concerns itself with the resistance, and how humans have chosen to resist or survive in the new world order, post-plague. The method of storytelling, with Toby narrating creation tales to the Crakers, works well even though the reader has to adjust to the back and forth between traditional novel narration and children's fables-style mythmaking. It is also wryly hilarious. The deepened characterization of Toby and Zeb is excellent.

Atwood's cold, clear prose is a pleasure to read, and at times her dry, deadpan humor surfaces to break the icy veneer. Followers of the trilogy will not be disappointed in the conclusion. The ending manages to be both grim and uplifting simultaneously.

"Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood. The loser falls over with a scream, followed with a foolish expression, mouth agape, eyes akimbo. Those old biblical kings, setting their feet on conquered necks, stringing up rival kings on trees, rejoicing in piles of heads -- there was an element of childish glee in all of that." - MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood

I remember my discovery of Oryx and Crake, the first book in the MadAddam trilogy. I was down with the stomach flu and had recently bought the novel at a used book store, as I was a huge fan of Margaret Atwood`s other works (The Blind Assassin, The Handmaid's Tale). I wasn't sure what to expect with Oryx and Crake, but I was blown away once I started reading. Despite my aching stomach, I read the book all the way through without stopping, moving from chair to floor and back again trying to ease my aches from the flu. I think Oryx and Crake is easily one of the best apocalyptic novels of our time, and I recently listed it in my list of the best apocalyptic audiobooks.

I bought The Year of the Flood, the second book in the trilogy, shortly after its release. The Year of the Flood takes place in the same dystopian period as Oryx and Crake, but can stand alone as its own novel. Margaret Atwood has created a new world in these stories, and the possibilities of her imagination are endless - both books are funny, sad, and brutal.

And now comes MaddAddam, the third (and final? let's hope not!) release in what is being called a trilogy. If you haven't read the first two books and are considering checking out MaddAddam, I'd say to read the other two first. There is much more to appreciate in this novel with an understanding of the story thus far. That being said, I haven't read the first two books in quite a while and the brief summary at the beginning of the new book helped me recall where each of the stories ended.

As with the sequel to Justin Cronin's hit apocalyptic book The Passage, MaddAddam has a lot to live up to. I could barely wait to see which direction Atwood would choose to take things.

And go off in a direction she did - MaddAddam reads like the Waiting for Godot of the trilogy, all wit and wait. This story begins where the other two books ended - with Jimmy and the Crakers (characters from Oyrx and Crake) encountering Ren, Toby, and Amanda (protagonists of The Year of the Flood). Those hoping for the quick pace of the first two books may be disappointed - much time is spent on debating the next move, on waiting for others to come back from various missions, and on reminiscing about times before the fall of man. At one point Toby wonders what she is supposed to do, where to go from here, and we are all right there with her. There is a feel here of a post-apocalyptic version of David Eggers' The Hologram for the King. Where The Hologram for the King leaves us waiting in the harsh landscape of a foreign desert nation, questioning the purpose and productivity of American business, MaddAddam leaves us waiting in a harsh dystopian future, questioning our own potential demise and what is left to do for those of us who survive.

As heavy as this sounds, MaddAddam is a book full of jokes and jesters. The Crakers (leaf eating, genetically modified semi-humans created to flourish in the new world) act as a Greek chorus of sorts, commenting on all they don't understand from before their creation, inadvertently asking us to evaluate our most basic assumptions. As she illustrated in The Penelopiad, a beautiful book of Penelope's thoughts on The Odyssey, Atwood is a master of myth. MaddAddam could be a study in the creation of myths (as could much science fiction), as the Crakers' mythology continues to evolve on what they hear from humans.

Aside from The Crakers, who steal the show in this novel, the other star of the story is Zeb. Zeb is a unique character for Atwood to take on, as many of her books feature strong female characters, and readers may be predictably dismayed that he is the focus rather than the more gentle Adam or the matriarch of the group Toby. Zeb is masculine to the max - swearing and crude, he picks on his scrawny brother, he kills without regrets, he woos the women around him. In the same pre-apocalyptic flashback style used in the first two books, we get to learn of Zeb's history and his role in the disasters which struck the human race. Atwood writes at one point "The old symbol systems follow us around," and they surely do here. Toby's struggle with loving an alpha-male like Zeb could stand just as well in a tale from the frontier West or current suburban America.

As always, Atwood's writing is stellar. Her descriptions are short knife slices, her dialogue is smart and funny. A woman in the group "looks flinty-eyed, like a wood carving of herself. She'd make a good executioner..." As with Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, part of the joy here is reading Atwood's vivid creation of a future gone mad - nefarious corporations, company backed oil-worshipping churches ("Church of PetrOleum, affiliated with the somewhat more mainstream Petrobaptists"), porn devolved into simulated or real violence, genetically modified animals grown for human profit (Mo'hairs - "Hair Today, Mo'hair Tomorrow went the add when the creatures had first been launched.") "Funny old thing, the human race," Zeb says at one point in the story - and Atwood's future shows the human race to be a funny thing indeed.

Atwood's dystopian world has now spanned over a 10 year time period (Oryx and Crake was published in 2003), and I have to wonder if MaddAddam will really be the last addition to the series. By the end of MaddAddam it is clear there is so much more to be explored - especially regarding Blackbeard, the charming Craker who becomes Toby's shadow early in the story. MaddAddam feels more to me like an interlude than a final chapter. More is revealed here, and enemies become allies; but this world is enchanting, gruesome, and hard to let go.

This was an absolutely riveting trilogy by Atwood. I loved the writing style in this finale, told in three ways - when Toby and Blackbeard tell stories to the Crakers, Zeb's story told through conversation between Toby and Zeb, and then the "what's happening now".

The ending was a little bit sad, but it also seemed perfect and I am satisfied with it. Just as with "The Handmaid's Tale", I am now imagining what happened afterward - what was that smoke? do the "two-skinned" humans live and reproduce? what are the Craker-human hybrids like? There are so many questions but I love that this book has me thinking about all this.

Atwood is a wonderful storyteller. Now I'm off to read some of her other books!

The last third of the book was enthralling reading, but the first two-thirds weren't. MaddAddam follows the same formula as the fist two novels in the series (narrators in the present, trying to survive reminisce on the past), and I felt the strategy was a little dull by this point in the series. In my opinion, Oryx and Crake is heads and shoulders above the final two installments, and Maddaddam is somewhat stronger than Year of the Flood.

If you've come this far in the series, it goes without saying MaddAddam is worth reading and ends what was a mostly-solid trilogy. There are times Atwood's prose shines as it did in Oryx and Crake, and the book is worth reading for those moments alone.

I enjoyed this novel immensely and yet I am a little dissatisfied with it.

As the ending of the trilogy, "MaddAddam" works quite well. There are hardly any questions about the future of the new humanity that Atwood leaves unanswered. We can see how Crakers will evolve. Their future is not dire, it's not utopian, it's not a salvation as Crake intended it to be, it's not even much different from the path the humanity has already seen throughout its history. I especially liked how Atwood weaved a birth of religion into this story. Which bring up the question - will things be really different this time around, or will Crakers transform into war-waging, violence loving beings as we are?

For all its seriousness though, "MaddAddam" is a surprisingly funny and uplifting novel, something I didn't expect from an Atwood novel, and certainly not from a story which started as gory and unforgiving as "Oryx and Crake" was..

What is lacking, I guess, is scope. At the title suggests, this book is supposed to be about MaddAddam, a person as vital to the narrative of this story as Crake is and was in "Oryx and Crake". But do we get to really know him? I don't think so. I feel like we got a better glimpse at Crake through the eyes of Jimmy in "Oryx and Crake," than we did at MaddAddam through the eyes of Zeb, and Zeb is just not as exciting as MaddAddam. These two books ("Oryx and Crake" and "MaddAddam") could have been a neat mirror of each other - depicting the two leaders on the opposite sides of the conflict that lead to basically the end of the world as we know it. And yet, I felt the figure of MaddAddam was underdeveloped and underexplored.

It still was a great pleasure to read, however.

MaddAddam is a wonderful conclusion to Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic trilogy that begins with Oryx and Crake and continues with The Year of the Flood. I read both of those other novels right when they came out, but I almost wish I had waited until this one was published to read them all in succession. (I love Atwood, so there is no way I would have done that!) It is the probably not too distant future, after contemporary society has collapsed, a few survivors are living together, trying to get by. There are a handful of humans, as well as some "Crakers," a genetically engineered group of human-like creatures. Atwood has woven a great story together with an incisive criticism of contemporary society. Her criticism is not heavy-handed or obvious, however, and that makes MaddAddam such a wonderful read. This novel is thought-provoking and witty. Very well-done. Enjoy!

Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite writers, and I found the previous volumes in this trilogy -- Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood-- almost impossible to put down. To say that I have been looking forward to the conclusion is an extreme understatement.

I liked MaddAddam. And yet. . .

The intensity of this novel seems a bit watered down when compared to the previous volumes. And Toby, the hard as nails protagonist of The Year of the Flood, is weaker here, softened by her romantic feelings for Zeb. Her main concern seems to be whether her lover is cheating on her, and this seems rather unworthy of the Toby Atwood gave us in the previous book. Particularly with the threats to the group's survival. Toby is further softened by the maternal role she is given with the Crakers, and she takes over Jimmy's role of storyteller.

MaddAddam certainly ties up the trilogy nicely, and it answers a lot of questions posed by the other books in the trilogy. Rather than focusing on action, as with the previous books, Atwood here focuses on mythmaking and rebuilding. After the fall is complete, how will society rebuild? Perhaps this is why, even though the stories Toby tells the Crakers are interesting, the book as a whole is not as compelling as Oryx and Crake or the Year of the Flood.

I would argue, however, that a weaker Atwood novel is still a very worthy investment -- as long as you have read the previous books in the trilogy.

Though I didn't like MADDADDAM the final volume in Margaret Atwood's dystopian trilogy as well as its predecessors ORYX AND CAKE and THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD I still found it well written and a fitting end to the series. Like the previous volumes the book has disturbing and even sleep robbing elements to it though these haunting images are actually a credit to Atwood's near genius writing skills. While the writing of MADDADDAM is up to Atwood's usual standards this book just did not compel me to quickly turn the pages like the first two so I can only give it four stars as I did find myself a bit disappointed in the book though that may be partly due to my admitted high expectations. I strongly recommend this series to fans of the speculative fiction genre but any one trying to read this final volume before the first two is likely to be very frustrated.

I've notice that of the four big-selling books by women I've read over the past few years, Water for Elephants: A Novel,The Time Traveler's Wife,Life After Life: A Novel, and this book, three of them have some sort of science fiction element. Although that's not unusual in science fiction, with authors like Ursula K. LeGuin and Connie Willis, in the novels I first mentioned have less of a "space cowboys" attitude, and more an attitude that "one major thing has changed and how does everyone react?"

Margaret Atwood has gone a little further with this idea, although she presents a near future where a combination of unbridled capitalism and ecological ruin have completely changed the way we live. Gene mutation has given rise to a number of new species, and a plague has killed of the majority of humans. This leaves some of the humans living in a forest "fort," making the occasional trip to the ruins of a big city to scour for supplies.

The dozen or so humans are joined by the Crakers, a new version of humanity who have few of the faults of the originals. They're named for Crake, the brilliant but dead biochemist that made them live on a diet of Kudzu and be unable to fight. The Crakers are inquisitive, picking on every word that humans use and asking to know what it means. At one point they fixate on the meaning of the F-word - they eventually believe that it is a being that will help others. At other times they sing or hum.

Narrating the story is Toby, one of the Gardeners, a sect that tried to preserve the Earth. She longs for her boyfriend, Jeb, who was a member of the MaddAddamites, a group of bio-terrorists who tried to stop the big corporations from ruining the Earth. She tells the Crakers about Jeb's past, including his brother, Adam, who formed the MaddAddamites before the plague.

If you've read the two previous books in the series you'll be aware of much of the above. My wife, who reads everything that Atwood creates, says that you should read the two preceding books in the series. My view is that the "story so far" that Atwood provides before the main story was enough for me to get through this book. The book is not obsessed with plot in the big sense - although plenty happens, much depends on the interpersonal relationships.

So both my wife and myself recommend this book. Atwood paints a convincing picture of post-apocalyptic life as characters dream of real coffee and dress in bedsheets. There is a cloud hanging over the fort in that there are Painballers, who are humans reduced to torturing other humans and then eating them. They live outside the fort but could invade at any time.

The book has lots of humor, like Toby constantly having to tell the Crakers to "stop singing" before she can continue with her tale. There are a few gruesome details, and a small amount of action. In the end the humans have something of a brighter future.

Get this book and read it. Atwood weaves the tale so well, you'll be drawn in to it. If there was another book following this in the series, I'd read it in an instant.

I first became aware of Margaret Atwood through her novel The Handmaid's Tale, and while I found MaddAddam somewhat hard to follow because I hadn't read the previous novels in the series, I ended up liking it nonetheless. There was a summary of the previous novels which made it slightly easier to get the gist of the story in this one, and I liked it because of the dystopian setting and Toby's interactions with the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human creation of Crake, a brilliant geneticist who has passed away some time back. Zeb, Toby's lover, also goes on some adventures of his own which add to the richness and complexity of the MaddAddamites' tale.

All in all, a pretty good book, although I would recommend to other readers that they start out with the first two novels, Oryx and Crake; and The Year of the Flood.

It takes a great writer to weave together a story that engages readers while at the same delivering a disturbing message about our possible future. Margaret Atwood is such a great writer, and her new novel, MaddAddam, completes a trilogy that presents a vision of the world we may be creating. This satire projects what may happen if some trends continue. In Atwood's future, genetic engineering has gone amuck, a pandemic devastated humanity, while species have gone extinct. Amid this bleak landscape, there is the development of community and bonds of enduring love. Readers who have read the earlier novels will certainly want to read this one to be able to enjoy a satisfying conclusion. New readers to the series or Atwood can start here, and will likely want to read more.

Rating: Five-star (I love it)

my least favorite of the triology is still "the year of the flood". oryx and crake should be the only book , turning it into a triology seems and feels like a marketing strategy; and a very bad one. i still dont believe the last two are written by M A. this is truly NOT her penmanship. the use of words, the YA dialogues, the "action" scenes". ..there are no literary features-just cheap paperback tricks, cliches.no, this cant be her.

Being the 3rd book in a series, I did a re-read of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood prior to reading this. That wasn't entirely necessary but I have no regrets about doing so. I enjoyed having it all fresh in my mind going in.

If a reader hasn't read the first two books and wants to read this one is that a problem? Probably not. There's a good synopsis of the first two books at the start. However, I do feel like you'd be missing out on some great books.

At first I wasn't sure I was going to love this book. Often I didn't think I was going to love this book. It follows the same pattern of the previous books, where part of the story is told in the story's "present" and part was reflections and back story, and in this case ... I just didn't want or need the back story. Sometimes it was just random stories that really didn't fit in all, and then it was a re-hash of events (or lead up to events) from prior books (particularly Year of the Flood) told from a different character's point of view. That REALLY annoyed me.

But the parts in the "present" were so good, and as the book went on it just kept getting better and better, and by the end I absolutely loved it. So if you get bogged down in the beginning, don't let it get you down. It's worth it to persevere.

Atwood is a master story-teller, a beautiful writer, she's funny and she's created memorable characters you can't help but love, (especially a certain little Craker named Blackbeard!) I thought this was a perfect ending to the series.

This book brought up some mixed feelings. I enjoyed the gritty intensity and clever unraveling of the previous two books and while I enjoyed MaddAddam, there were certainly parts that dragged and parts that were rushed. Overall a good book and brings a semi-satisfying end to the series. I appreciate the detail of the characters and their background and the change in perspective but was still left feeling like there could have been more. Will be interesting to see this played out in the TV series.

This book follows the same format as the other two before it. A story line which takes you back through the past of one of the main characters (Zeb in this case) mixed with the happenings of the present. I found Zeb's story a bit more interesting than the rest but nothing that much more exciting that what was told in the past. All in all a good series which is interesting an a sci-fi way but if you're looking for more of a post-apocalyptic read where you see the end of the world this isn't really that type of book.

Margaret Atwood is one of my favorite writers, and I found the previous volumes in this trilogy -- Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood-- almost impossible to put down. To say that I have been looking forward to the conclusion is an extreme understatement.

I liked MaddAddam. And yet. . .

The intensity of this novel seems a bit watered down when compared to the previous volumes. And Toby, the hard as nails protagonist of The Year of the Flood, is weaker here, softened by her romantic feelings for Zeb. Her main concern seems to be whether her lover is cheating on her, and this seems rather unworthy of the Toby Atwood gave us in the previous book. Particularly with the threats to the group's survival. Toby is further softened by the maternal role she is given with the Crakers, and she takes over Jimmy's role of storyteller.

MaddAddam certainly ties up the trilogy nicely, and it answers a lot of questions posed by the other books in the trilogy. Rather than focusing on action, as with the previous books, Atwood here focuses on mythmaking and rebuilding. After the fall is complete, how will society rebuild? Perhaps this is why, even though the stories Toby tells the Crakers are interesting, the book as a whole is not as compelling as Oryx and Crake or the Year of the Flood.

I would argue, however, that a weaker Atwood novel is still a very worthy investment -- as long as you have read the previous books in the trilogy.

Though I didn't like MADDADDAM the final volume in Margaret Atwood's dystopian trilogy as well as its predecessors ORYX AND CAKE and THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD I still found it well written and a fitting end to the series. Like the previous volumes the book has disturbing and even sleep robbing elements to it though these haunting images are actually a credit to Atwood's near genius writing skills. While the writing of MADDADDAM is up to Atwood's usual standards this book just did not compel me to quickly turn the pages like the first two so I can only give it four stars as I did find myself a bit disappointed in the book though that may be partly due to my admitted high expectations. I strongly recommend this series to fans of the speculative fiction genre but any one trying to read this final volume before the first two is likely to be very frustrated.

I've notice that of the four big-selling books by women I've read over the past few years, Water for Elephants: A Novel,The Time Traveler's Wife,Life After Life: A Novel, and this book, three of them have some sort of science fiction element. Although that's not unusual in science fiction, with authors like Ursula K. LeGuin and Connie Willis, in the novels I first mentioned have less of a "space cowboys" attitude, and more an attitude that "one major thing has changed and how does everyone react?"

Margaret Atwood has gone a little further with this idea, although she presents a near future where a combination of unbridled capitalism and ecological ruin have completely changed the way we live. Gene mutation has given rise to a number of new species, and a plague has killed of the majority of humans. This leaves some of the humans living in a forest "fort," making the occasional trip to the ruins of a big city to scour for supplies.

The dozen or so humans are joined by the Crakers, a new version of humanity who have few of the faults of the originals. They're named for Crake, the brilliant but dead biochemist that made them live on a diet of Kudzu and be unable to fight. The Crakers are inquisitive, picking on every word that humans use and asking to know what it means. At one point they fixate on the meaning of the F-word - they eventually believe that it is a being that will help others. At other times they sing or hum.

Narrating the story is Toby, one of the Gardeners, a sect that tried to preserve the Earth. She longs for her boyfriend, Jeb, who was a member of the MaddAddamites, a group of bio-terrorists who tried to stop the big corporations from ruining the Earth. She tells the Crakers about Jeb's past, including his brother, Adam, who formed the MaddAddamites before the plague.

If you've read the two previous books in the series you'll be aware of much of the above. My wife, who reads everything that Atwood creates, says that you should read the two preceding books in the series. My view is that the "story so far" that Atwood provides before the main story was enough for me to get through this book. The book is not obsessed with plot in the big sense - although plenty happens, much depends on the interpersonal relationships.

So both my wife and myself recommend this book. Atwood paints a convincing picture of post-apocalyptic life as characters dream of real coffee and dress in bedsheets. There is a cloud hanging over the fort in that there are Painballers, who are humans reduced to torturing other humans and then eating them. They live outside the fort but could invade at any time.

The book has lots of humor, like Toby constantly having to tell the Crakers to "stop singing" before she can continue with her tale. There are a few gruesome details, and a small amount of action. In the end the humans have something of a brighter future.

Get this book and read it. Atwood weaves the tale so well, you'll be drawn in to it. If there was another book following this in the series, I'd read it in an instant.

I first became aware of Margaret Atwood through her novel The Handmaid's Tale, and while I found MaddAddam somewhat hard to follow because I hadn't read the previous novels in the series, I ended up liking it nonetheless. There was a summary of the previous novels which made it slightly easier to get the gist of the story in this one, and I liked it because of the dystopian setting and Toby's interactions with the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human creation of Crake, a brilliant geneticist who has passed away some time back. Zeb, Toby's lover, also goes on some adventures of his own which add to the richness and complexity of the MaddAddamites' tale.

All in all, a pretty good book, although I would recommend to other readers that they start out with the first two novels, Oryx and Crake; and The Year of the Flood.

It takes a great writer to weave together a story that engages readers while at the same delivering a disturbing message about our possible future. Margaret Atwood is such a great writer, and her new novel, MaddAddam, completes a trilogy that presents a vision of the world we may be creating. This satire projects what may happen if some trends continue. In Atwood's future, genetic engineering has gone amuck, a pandemic devastated humanity, while species have gone extinct. Amid this bleak landscape, there is the development of community and bonds of enduring love. Readers who have read the earlier novels will certainly want to read this one to be able to enjoy a satisfying conclusion. New readers to the series or Atwood can start here, and will likely want to read more.

Rating: Five-star (I love it)

my least favorite of the triology is still "the year of the flood". oryx and crake should be the only book , turning it into a triology seems and feels like a marketing strategy; and a very bad one. i still dont believe the last two are written by M A. this is truly NOT her penmanship. the use of words, the YA dialogues, the "action" scenes". ..there are no literary features-just cheap paperback tricks, cliches.no, this cant be her.

Being the 3rd book in a series, I did a re-read of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood prior to reading this. That wasn't entirely necessary but I have no regrets about doing so. I enjoyed having it all fresh in my mind going in.

If a reader hasn't read the first two books and wants to read this one is that a problem? Probably not. There's a good synopsis of the first two books at the start. However, I do feel like you'd be missing out on some great books.

At first I wasn't sure I was going to love this book. Often I didn't think I was going to love this book. It follows the same pattern of the previous books, where part of the story is told in the story's "present" and part was reflections and back story, and in this case ... I just didn't want or need the back story. Sometimes it was just random stories that really didn't fit in all, and then it was a re-hash of events (or lead up to events) from prior books (particularly Year of the Flood) told from a different character's point of view. That REALLY annoyed me.

But the parts in the "present" were so good, and as the book went on it just kept getting better and better, and by the end I absolutely loved it. So if you get bogged down in the beginning, don't let it get you down. It's worth it to persevere.

Atwood is a master story-teller, a beautiful writer, she's funny and she's created memorable characters you can't help but love, (especially a certain little Craker named Blackbeard!) I thought this was a perfect ending to the series.

This book brought up some mixed feelings. I enjoyed the gritty intensity and clever unraveling of the previous two books and while I enjoyed MaddAddam, there were certainly parts that dragged and parts that were rushed. Overall a good book and brings a semi-satisfying end to the series. I appreciate the detail of the characters and their background and the change in perspective but was still left feeling like there could have been more. Will be interesting to see this played out in the TV series.

The third installment in Atwood's dystopian trilogy does not disappoint. With her signature style, Atwood brings books one and two into the trilogy's conclusion. In this book, we see characters from the first two books joined together again and the mysterious Crakers take more of a center stage. We learn the backstories of many of the vital elements and it weaves together seamlessly with the present day events of the survivors struggle against the world and other survivors. If you have never read any of Margaret Atwoods books before, this is the perfect trilogy to do so, pick up Oryx and Crake, then the Year of the Flood along with this book and just sit and read. You will not want to put these down once you start.

This book follows the same format as the other two before it. A story line which takes you back through the past of one of the main characters (Zeb in this case) mixed with the happenings of the present. I found Zeb's story a bit more interesting than the rest but nothing that much more exciting that what was told in the past. All in all a good series which is interesting an a sci-fi way but if you're looking for more of a post-apocalyptic read where you see the end of the world this isn't really that type of book.

Five Stars
MaddAdam is exactly what the followers of this trilogy were looking for. This book ties all the ends together for us. It's masterful, and shows how well planned out this series was! I got the ARC on Netgalley and was planning to have my review up as soon as it was released but I'm so excited to finally have all my thoughts together.

O&C really have us the basis to this story. We learn about Crake, and Jimmy and the whole world. Then we wait and wait, and finally Year of the Flood comes in and we meet more characters, the gardeners, a whole bigger world. We experience things more emotionally, it's stronger then O&C and it hurts more too.

Finally, MaddAdam comes along, allow a final conclusion. It's a slow beginning but it picks right up where both books left off. Picks it up and starts tying it together. Each strand has been previously addressed and now we're hearing the stories. The stories of Zeb, the Stories of Adam, and the stories of Crake. We are finally getting all the little pieces to come to together and we start to have glimpses of what the whole picture really looks like. We've seen fragments, and some have been happy, others are sad, but we've been awaiting the full picture.

MaddAdam is similar to Year of the flood in the way it's broken apart by stories like YotF was broken apart by the feast days in Toby's journal. I adore the idea of the folk tales, of the Crakes learning of themselves and of their world through these tales.

Overall, this novel was wonderful, made me sob like a baby with Margaret Atwood's amazingly emotional storytelling and reminded me why I love her books so much. This is a stratifying conclusion to the whole trilogy, and though it's different, because it's told by different people and in a different section of time, it still resonates clearly with both of the previous books, and keeps the story arch strong and consistent! I really loved it, and am prepared to start all over again so it doesn't have to end.

** I was given this book through NetGalley as a reviewer. **

Atwood mesmerizes with her Maddaddam trilogy. ORYX AND CRAKE, the first of the series nearly lost me, though. It opened in a way that disturbed my habit of suspending disbelief. It took many pages until I could form any opinion about the childlike humanoid creatures and their fully human "shepherd." I'm very glad that I persisted, though. The second book of the trilogy, AFTER THE FLOOD, brought even more clarity by relating a story that paralleled and interfaced with the first story through the eyes of two more main characters. By the time I got to MADDADDAM, final book of the trilogy, I was deeply invested in the world Atwood created and deeply impressed by her artistic articulation of the things that might continue to exist, be regenerated and resurrected after the annihilation of the world we think we know.

Oryx & Crake had me believeing the world had ended and a wonderful new species was going to populate the Earth. By the time I got to the end of the third book I was convinced I was watching an episode of Survivor and the wonderful new species was mentally retarded. "Snowman The Jimmy" seriously? I also had to ask myself, was this a world wide cataclysm or not? It didn't feel that way to me. All the main characters are still alive with most of them having no explanation as to how. Ren was originally singled out and given a backstory as to why she survived but that counted for nothing when all of the member of the Gardeners came through unscathed. Also we are told that the very infrastructure is crumbling everywhere. Except the AnooYoo Spa which it seems has clean towels and loads of fresh soap. Also of some concern to me is why - with the Earth as a free for all go nuts take anything you want place - the escaped Painballers just stay hanging around the Cobb House! And while I'm on the subject of scale; considering this a world wide catastrophe, why is the entire surviving world condensed into an area the size of a football field?? The purity of the idea and execution behind the first book was polluted by the following two. Now where's my BlyssPluss? I have a headache.

MaddAddam starts where Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood ended. It tells the story of the survivors of the pandemic, and flashbacks shed some light on Zeb’s enigmatic character. I enjoyed learning more about Zeb’s past, but the narrative for the post-apocalyptic story was slow going. It’s not until the last 50 pages or so that we got some action, and it seemed rushed and incomplete. However, I was blown away by the ending that revealed a possibility that I might not have otherwise thought of.

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

Certainly this third book gives hope for our humaneness but it rambles a bit and seems an add on rather than planned and carried out. I loved Oryx and Crake. The Year of the Flood was a book in itself. I think trilogies should be written or at least planned from the beginning.

MaddAddam provides explanations to previously unknown stories of the main characters as well as introducing us to the Crackers and other animal creatures more. This third book in the trilogy is much more passive and discursive in nature and instead of relying on action to create drama, the drama is contained in the past before the flood.

Now, what intrigues me more than anything else is the possibility that this isn't the end of the story. Certainly there is more in store from Atwood about this world of cross-breeding between humans and human hybrids? Only time will tell.

I want to shout it from the rooftops: this is the best in post-apocalyptic fiction I have read in some time! And then the language! It flows and meanders, and it sweeps one away... The story telling inside the story telling (Toby) is imaginative, original, and ties back to the tradition of oral stories done by shamans, wise women, Homer.. The allusions to and variations of biblical cosmogony (the analogy to Russian dolls comes to mind) are superb and invite deep thinking. I have enjoyed MaddAddam and, likewise, The Year of the Flood. I am sad that I am done reading the MaddAddam trilogy. Margaret Atwood just gets better and better.

First of all, having been several years since the last book, I must commend Atwood for her prologue which nicely sums the first two books up for the reader before we delve into book three of the trilogy. I vote all books do this in series from here on out, yes?

This last book does a nice job in bringing the two "parallel universes" so to speak, back together again, connecting the remaining "survivors" and doing a sort of cultural clash with the Crakes and Snowman followers of the world to sum it up.

A great post-apocalyptic series overall and an amazing end to an amazing series, highly recommended!

It is past midnight and I just could not stop reading. Margaret Atwood creates these wonderful characters that you become so attached to. I loved Toby, Zeb, Bluebeard and all the rest. It is the whole post apocalyptic world story but the best one I have ever read. I love the humour through the book like when they are trapped in the spa they eat the avocado face masks. I love the new race of humans created to be so much better than humans, vegetarian, non violent etc who you just know will evolve into humans. Fabulous book and is highly recommended.

Margaret Atwood's astounding new novel MaddAddam brings to an end the trilogy which began a decade ago with Oryx and Crake, then continued with The Year of the Flood in 2009. The trilogy takes place in a New World, dramatically reshaped after the "Waterless Flood," a global pandemic caused by extreme genetic manipulation. This third book brings back characters from the first two, including Jimmy (a.k.a. Snowman), Toby, Ren, and Amanda. This time there is more of a focus on the character of Zeb, Toby's lover, with his previous life revealed via flashbacks. Meanwhile, in the present, events are moving toward either a resolution of sorts or a fall into even greater chaos. Going against the decade it took for Ms Atwood to write this most unique and masterful trilogy, I read the three books back-to-back-to-back. As a result, some portion of my mind is still immersed in this world she created, and I expect its strange creatures and environments will continue to echo in my thoughts for weeks to come.

I was very disappointed. I'm not sure where this novel was going. I thought it would wrap up the story of Jimmy, and it does, but it casts his character to the side. You barely hear from him. It wasn't nearly as interesting as the first two. The story drags along. I just felt like the first two books were set up for something that doesn't happen in the third.

So disappointing. It read the hard copy books of the first two in this series, and listened to MaddAddam, I'm not sure how that affected my enjoyment, but clearly this was not a well-thought out book with a whimper of an ending. I had a really hard time suspending my disbelief in this third book - all the characters end up knowing each other and coincidentally they all survive the waterless flood and bump in to each other in what seems like a few square miles. Much of the book is spent explaining back story of Adam and Zeb that I found totally boring and irrelevant to the present situation, the premise of which is fascinating. While I really respected Toby from the previous book, she turns in to a blubbering, jealous woman that I could hardly bear to read about. And if I hear a Craker say "Oh, Toby" one more time...

The first two books in the series were better in my opinion. This book was largely based on the history of Zeb which I felt was boring at times and merely skimmed it to get the gist of his background. If you liked the first two books and want to see how "it all turns out" and IF you can get it free from the library, go for it. I would not pay money for this book.

WHY??? For the life of me I can't see the point to this book. I loved the first two books in the trilogy but this one was just pointless. It didn't add anything to the story and it was so tedious to read. Actually I have three pages left and I can't seem to muster the energy to slog through it. I should have put it down after the chapter on OH "F".

If you loved the first two books in this series I suggest you just leave it there. Don't bother with the third, so disappointing.

Very interesting author's choices throughout the series to alter the narrator and flip between many perspectives. Appreciated the strength and compassion of the protagonists and the complexity of human nature portrayed.

Oryx and Crake is one of my favorite books as it explores a post apocalyptic world, along with flashbacks. It ends on a cliffhanger and thus we waited for the next book.

Year of the Flood was just plain boring as a side/parallel story with the hippy-like characters surviving in the end and not expanding upon Oryx and Crake.

And now we come to MaddAddam. I bought this on day one and I am incredibly disappointed with it. I will not include any spoilers, but it gets more ridiculous than the "hippies are indestructible" YOTF storyline. The plot is everywhere and main characters from the previous stories are set aside and not given proper closure. Unlike most other post apocalyptic literature that ends with society rebuilding (or getting wiped out), this one just ends really pathetically.

Just read Oryx and Crake and come up with your own ending. Pass on the other two.

Oh, Atwood! Her biting brilliance and black satire on where humans, with all our greed, self absorption and fatal belief that all earth is for our consumption and abuse leads me to think she is beyond hope for our species and delighted to present us with a not unrealistic view of the anytime future. Just hope that includes a Nobel for Atwood. Read the trilogy, then read it again.

The three books in this set are quite enjoyable to read. They encourage some serious thinking about where we are and where we could be with current and future capabilities in biotech. I wouldn't particularly recommend any of them on a single basis, hence 4 stars instead of 5 for this book. They really only work well as a set, as far as I'm concerned.

I almost didn't write this review. In part because if you read the first two, then you need to finish the trilogy no matter how bad it rates, and second, I don't take any joy from bashing Atwood's last book in the trilogy.
The first book was amazingly insightful, and scarily imaginative. The more you know about the current state of our food industry, the more real it becomes. The second book was great! Suspense, back story, eventful. It seemed like Atwood was building up to a really, really great finale. This last book was supposed to be fantastic. Everything was set in place, and she certainly made us wait long enough. Instead. At least 1/3 of the book is all about Zed. And the rest about the Craker's. It got to the point where I found myself saying "enough with these damn Craker's already"! Needless to say. I was disappointed, and feel that it fell short.

I've read Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, and both were quite disturbing. I didn't enjoy reading such a terrible future, and I didn't like many characters. Despite that, I couldn't stop reading them. I was haunted by the events in the books and had many nightmares. Therefore, I was both afraid of and excited with the Maddaddam, the conclusion to this special trilogy.

It was not as mysterious as previous 2 books, which I kind of missed. But the story is still disturbing and addictive. I was not surprised by the ending even though I was hoping the different one. It's depressing, but strangely hopeful.

There are many apocalyptic stories out there (especially YA fantasies), but none of them are as thought provoking as this trilogy.

Margaret Atwood could well be the greatest living novelist. She continues to produce thought-provoking, funny, and well-crafted novels. Her social satire is subtle and on-target. This third book in her trilogy is strong. I was concerned that after two other novels with the same concepts and characters, I might be bored, but she continued to surprise and interest me. Anyone who appreciates top-notch fiction and hasn't read the series can have the great pleasure of starting with Oryx and Crake.

At last, we have the conclusion of the MaddAddam Trilogy. MaddAddam picks up where the previous two novels in the series (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood) converge. While one could get away with only reading MaddAddam (there's a brief synopsis of the first two books at the beginning), I would not recommend it.

For those not familiar with Margaret Atwood, there is no other way to say it; Atwood's post apocalyptic future is both terrifying and stunning.

This is definitely a must read trilogy!

There are a few reviews that I read on here that hit the nail right on the head, so I'm going to be brief.

To start: Oryx and Crake is my favorite book of all time. The Year of the Flood is my second favorite. I thought they were amazing books and I've read them countless times.

MaddAddam however...is pretty much as bad as it gets. I feel terrible writing such a terrible review of my favorite author's book, but I think I'm still in shock that she could write such a piece of crap.

***Slight spoilers follow***

She uses several technological ideas (like tablets) that are not related to the plot or in any way necessary. If I remember correctly, she also uses internet jargon as well. The plot had potential to be very interesting, but instead of taking it in an awesome direction she spent the entire book destroying who her characters were. At the end of the book, the character we all knew and loved as Toby has become a simpering moron of a woman who's essentially useless.

I'm sorry to be so critical, Ms. Atwood....but you should not have released this book.

This apparently final book of the trilogy, brings many of the characters from the previous books together. As in the other books, it switches between pre apocalypse flash backs and post apocalypse times. This time the focus is on the Zeb character. What I liked best about this book is the humor. Their are many laugh out loud hilarious passages that lighten the mood. Don't even think of reading this book without reading the other two books - in order

Atwood's idea was good...but come on, all men don't drool over women with big boobs and lose their ability to think when a colorful cocktail is handed to them. Why in a cataclysm of such proportions do all the main characters get spared and everyone else is destroyed? And if the Crakers were made to be "simple" so they won't recreate the "horrible" mistakes of humankind, why do they learn so much so quickly...why do they even have the ability to speak at all? These books are full of cardboard characters and so many contradictory things it just doesn't make sense. Don't waste your time.

This is more a vehicle for Atwood's formidable vocabulary than a satisfying "end of the world" tale. She brings the stories together, but it's all too convenient and forced. I was disappointed - read "Station Eleven" or "The Girl with all the Gifts" instead.

A disappointing end to a fascinating trilogy. It's remarkably lacking in conflict, and moreover doesn't bother to explore the motivations behind the cataclysm that underlies the events of the book. I was really hoping for much more after the excellent "Year of the Flood."