Reviews

i want to say that i hated the ending but i think that it needed to finish like that. i liked the questions it raised about family and the apocalypse was interesting to explore but i liked that it took a backseat to the personal experience of it

kturi's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

han_reardonsmith's review against another edition

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4.0

This book has some really beautiful moments, along with some heartwrenching ones. Many reviews seem hung up on the handmaid’s tale comparisons, but I found this instead to be a beautiful meditation on complex relationships to religion, adoption, lineage, gender, time, Indigeneity, pregnancy, and depression. The character of Eddy in particular is gloriously moving, the only man of honourable spirit in the book. Rather than a retelling of the handmaid’s tale I find this to be (as the title suggests) something of a “2nd coming of christ” narrative, that holds a possibility of the return of power, agency, Land, and Culture to Native folks (and also not, as, in the case of Cedar/Mary—like so many Native birthers before her, her baby is yet again stolen from her at birth).

The missed opportunity here, imho, is to somewhat more deeply complexify the colonial gender binary and cisheteronormativity, which runs stubbornly deep throughout.

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