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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
The first half felt a little aimless, but the novel tied up really nicely at the end. Favorite quote:
"Mourning dove, robin, crow, bluejay, bullfrog. Toby says their names, but these names mean nothing to them. Soon her own language will be gone out of her head and this will be all that's left in there. Oodle-oodle-oo, hoom hoom. The ceaseless repetition, the song with no begging and no end. No questions, no answers, not in so many words. Not in any words at all. Or is it all one huge Word?
Where has this notion come from, out of nowhere and into her head?
Tobeee!
So much like someone calling her. But it's only birdsong."
"Mourning dove, robin, crow, bluejay, bullfrog. Toby says their names, but these names mean nothing to them. Soon her own language will be gone out of her head and this will be all that's left in there. Oodle-oodle-oo, hoom hoom. The ceaseless repetition, the song with no begging and no end. No questions, no answers, not in so many words. Not in any words at all. Or is it all one huge Word?
Where has this notion come from, out of nowhere and into her head?
Tobeee!
So much like someone calling her. But it's only birdsong."
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Completely captivated and terrifyingly close to home!
Margaret Atwood’s The Year Of The Flood is the second novel in her Oryx and Crake trilogy. It is set in the same time period and concludes a couple chapters after the first, resolving the cliff hanger O&C ends on. The novel jumps between two protagonists points of view, Toby and Ren as they grow up in the pleeblands. I loved this comparison to the compounds where Jimmy lived, I felt like I had a wider picture of the world. It was easy to distinguish the two different stories and build a full plot combining the three different stories (including Jimmys). Also I really enjoyed reading a different gendered perspectives of the issues O&C introduced, seeing how different it was trying to survive in this world as a woman and the different risks gender poses. I thought the Gardeners was such a realistic idea, in the apocalypse I'm sure these environmental groups would exist and if the Gardeners weren't so cult like I would defiantly join them. It was exciting to read about previous characters mentioned and build a better background on these secondary characters. The Year of the Flood provides a lot of insight of this world and better understanding of the issues characters are confronted with. Although the story is incredibly in-depth, a lot of things are repeated throughout so I didn’t get lost in the plot line and could identify where the two books overlapped in the timeline. As always, Atwood has created a horrific speculative fiction piece scaring me shitless.
Although The Year of the Flood can be read as a standalone without Oryx and Crake, why would anyone want to?! Both books bounce off one another so brilliantly it’s definitely worth reading the two of them.
Although The Year of the Flood can be read as a standalone without Oryx and Crake, why would anyone want to?! Both books bounce off one another so brilliantly it’s definitely worth reading the two of them.
If you’re looking for a direct continuation of where [b: Oryx and Crake|46756|Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1)|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1494109986l/46756._SY75_.jpg|3143431] left off, that is not the case. Though they do end up meeting, towards the end.
With that PSA out of the way, on to the review! Once again this was a slow start for me, even listening to the audiobook, as we are introduced to two new main characters to follow, Toby and Ren, both of whom are part of the God’s Gardeners religious cult headed by Adam One. Atwood took a similar approach to their story as she did Snowman’s, which was to have their pasts and presents slowly moving closer together until they meet, merge, and we move forward from there. It works well, especially once we start hearing about familiar names and faces (Amanda being one of the first, with spelling words in honey for ants to consume), and seeing just how intertwined Toby and Ren’s stories are with what has come before (the stories of Snowman/Jimmy, Oryx, and Crake/Glenn). In fact, it was when these familiar faces and names started appearing that I got more interested and curious to see just how intertwined the people and stories would end up being. There’s no such thing as a coincidence in this world, but instead many instances of orchestrated happenstance. Every person has their role to play in a larger narrative, though we get to see it only in piecemeal. Additionally, this audiobook edition featured full songs – lyrics by Atwood, put to music by someone, and sung (presumably) by Mark Bramhall, the third narrator/Adam One. For these, I went back to 1x speed instead of my usual 1.2x speed for this series (the 1x speed is just. so. slow!), and they were… interesting, in a strange way. Kind of a folksy/country mix, with that undercurrent of religious music – after all, they were songs based on the various ‘saints’ days in the God’s Gardeners religion.
Another ‘fun’ aspect was seeing the same messed-up world from two new perspectives, two new and vastly different experiences even if both Toby and Ren spend quite a bit of time with the Gardeners. Things that Jimmy grew up knowing as they were created – pigoons, rakunks, etc. – were new things to Toby and Ren. They appeared more suddenly, less organically, as most of the time frame in which we see Toby and Ren, they are living in the pleeblands outside of the various compounds. What was less fun was Toby’s time before she was adopted by the Gardeners, especially as I was listening to the end of her time at Secret Burger while doing the dishes, which meant I had it on speakerphone and my mom could hear what was going on. It was far from a pleasant scene – language and violence included – to just have kind of ‘out there’ and especially out of context for her. The world that Toby and Ren experience in this book is no more palatable than Jimmy/Snowman’s world, and indeed, is often worse, as we are in the pleeblands instead of the ‘safe’ and ‘clean’ compounds. I’ll give Atwood this for her speculative futuristic fiction: she knows how to take the worst of human nature and integrate it awesomely into a plausible yet thoroughly distasteful society.
Oryx’s experiences with child pornography in the previous book, then Toby’s experiences as a Texmex refugee and ‘toy’, and Ren’s experiences in the high-end “Scales and Tails” adult entertainment venue – not to mention the role/subjugation of women in “A Handmaid’s Tale” – makes for a common theme about the objectification of women, their bodies, and their roles in society, and how those elements are cornerstones of a broken society. Sure, there is of course an element of self-empowerment in a woman using her sex and her body to rise above her situation – Oryx in the previous book, and Ren in this one especially – which allows the woman to exert a sort of power within a society and reclaim her own destiny. At the same time, though, it feels just as much like a condemnation of this society which places such a high value on a woman’s body and her ability to use it, as though it is her main bargaining chip in life to get ahead. That was mostly the role of women in Jimmy/Snowman/Oryx’s story in the last book. Ren is sort of the bridge between that role and the role women like Pilar and Toby and the other Eves take in this book, where they have their own power which is not reliant on their sexuality but instead on their knowledge and abilities (Pilar with her bees and mushrooms, Toby with her herbal knowledge and what she learns from Pilar, and the various roles of the Eves).
There is a lot in this book, a running commentary on the various ways women are treated and abused in a working and a broken society, as well as – naturally – a commentary on environmentalism and the natural order of things – of plants, and nature, and meddling with the very DNA and codes which create life. By sticking with the story, there are some solid rewards to be had as storylines converge and overlap, as past and present merge into the future, though I have to hope that in the third and final book of the trilogy, we’ll be done with all these looks back and focus just on the here/now, and the future of things. I can only handle so much of such a terribly distasteful and broken society, even when the paths of the lives of the characters offer so many interesting turns and not-quite-coincidences.
Favorite Quotes
Our appetites, our desires, our more uncontrollable emotions, all are primate. Our fall from the original garden was a fall from the innocent acting out of such patterns and impulses to a conscious and shamed awareness of them. And from thence, comes our sadness, our anxiety, our doubt, our rage against God. – Chapter 10, 1:35:10 (Adam One) – This reminded me so much of the ideas behind Dust and daemons in the His Dark Materials series/world.
In any case, time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar, it’s a sea on which you float. – Chapter 19, 3:13:45 (Toby)
Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don’t care about them all that much? I don’t know why, but it’s true. – Chapter 30, 4:56:28 (Ren)
Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together. – Chapter 47, 8:27:00 (Toby)
The Adams and Eves used to say, “We are what we eat.” But I prefer to say, “We are what we wish.” Because if you can’t wish, why bother? – Chapter 73, 13:02:55 (Ren, I’m pretty sure)
Songs: Chapter 2, Chapter 10, Chapter 17, Chapter 23, Chapter 30, Chapter 36, Chapter 48, Chapter 54, Chapter 61, Chapter 67, Chapter 73, Chapter 76
With that PSA out of the way, on to the review! Once again this was a slow start for me, even listening to the audiobook, as we are introduced to two new main characters to follow, Toby and Ren, both of whom are part of the God’s Gardeners religious cult headed by Adam One. Atwood took a similar approach to their story as she did Snowman’s, which was to have their pasts and presents slowly moving closer together until they meet, merge, and we move forward from there. It works well, especially once we start hearing about familiar names and faces (Amanda being one of the first, with spelling words in honey for ants to consume), and seeing just how intertwined Toby and Ren’s stories are with what has come before (the stories of Snowman/Jimmy, Oryx, and Crake/Glenn). In fact, it was when these familiar faces and names started appearing that I got more interested and curious to see just how intertwined the people and stories would end up being. There’s no such thing as a coincidence in this world, but instead many instances of orchestrated happenstance. Every person has their role to play in a larger narrative, though we get to see it only in piecemeal. Additionally, this audiobook edition featured full songs – lyrics by Atwood, put to music by someone, and sung (presumably) by Mark Bramhall, the third narrator/Adam One. For these, I went back to 1x speed instead of my usual 1.2x speed for this series (the 1x speed is just. so. slow!), and they were… interesting, in a strange way. Kind of a folksy/country mix, with that undercurrent of religious music – after all, they were songs based on the various ‘saints’ days in the God’s Gardeners religion.
Another ‘fun’ aspect was seeing the same messed-up world from two new perspectives, two new and vastly different experiences even if both Toby and Ren spend quite a bit of time with the Gardeners. Things that Jimmy grew up knowing as they were created – pigoons, rakunks, etc. – were new things to Toby and Ren. They appeared more suddenly, less organically, as most of the time frame in which we see Toby and Ren, they are living in the pleeblands outside of the various compounds. What was less fun was Toby’s time before she was adopted by the Gardeners, especially as I was listening to the end of her time at Secret Burger while doing the dishes, which meant I had it on speakerphone and my mom could hear what was going on. It was far from a pleasant scene – language and violence included – to just have kind of ‘out there’ and especially out of context for her. The world that Toby and Ren experience in this book is no more palatable than Jimmy/Snowman’s world, and indeed, is often worse, as we are in the pleeblands instead of the ‘safe’ and ‘clean’ compounds. I’ll give Atwood this for her speculative futuristic fiction: she knows how to take the worst of human nature and integrate it awesomely into a plausible yet thoroughly distasteful society.
Oryx’s experiences with child pornography in the previous book, then Toby’s experiences as a Texmex refugee and ‘toy’, and Ren’s experiences in the high-end “Scales and Tails” adult entertainment venue – not to mention the role/subjugation of women in “A Handmaid’s Tale” – makes for a common theme about the objectification of women, their bodies, and their roles in society, and how those elements are cornerstones of a broken society. Sure, there is of course an element of self-empowerment in a woman using her sex and her body to rise above her situation – Oryx in the previous book, and Ren in this one especially – which allows the woman to exert a sort of power within a society and reclaim her own destiny. At the same time, though, it feels just as much like a condemnation of this society which places such a high value on a woman’s body and her ability to use it, as though it is her main bargaining chip in life to get ahead. That was mostly the role of women in Jimmy/Snowman/Oryx’s story in the last book. Ren is sort of the bridge between that role and the role women like Pilar and Toby and the other Eves take in this book, where they have their own power which is not reliant on their sexuality but instead on their knowledge and abilities (Pilar with her bees and mushrooms, Toby with her herbal knowledge and what she learns from Pilar, and the various roles of the Eves).
There is a lot in this book, a running commentary on the various ways women are treated and abused in a working and a broken society, as well as – naturally – a commentary on environmentalism and the natural order of things – of plants, and nature, and meddling with the very DNA and codes which create life. By sticking with the story, there are some solid rewards to be had as storylines converge and overlap, as past and present merge into the future, though I have to hope that in the third and final book of the trilogy, we’ll be done with all these looks back and focus just on the here/now, and the future of things. I can only handle so much of such a terribly distasteful and broken society, even when the paths of the lives of the characters offer so many interesting turns and not-quite-coincidences.
Favorite Quotes
Our appetites, our desires, our more uncontrollable emotions, all are primate. Our fall from the original garden was a fall from the innocent acting out of such patterns and impulses to a conscious and shamed awareness of them. And from thence, comes our sadness, our anxiety, our doubt, our rage against God. – Chapter 10, 1:35:10 (Adam One) – This reminded me so much of the ideas behind Dust and daemons in the His Dark Materials series/world.
In any case, time is not a thing that passes, said Pilar, it’s a sea on which you float. – Chapter 19, 3:13:45 (Toby)
Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don’t care about them all that much? I don’t know why, but it’s true. – Chapter 30, 4:56:28 (Ren)
Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together. – Chapter 47, 8:27:00 (Toby)
The Adams and Eves used to say, “We are what we eat.” But I prefer to say, “We are what we wish.” Because if you can’t wish, why bother? – Chapter 73, 13:02:55 (Ren, I’m pretty sure)
Songs: Chapter 2, Chapter 10, Chapter 17, Chapter 23, Chapter 30, Chapter 36, Chapter 48, Chapter 54, Chapter 61, Chapter 67, Chapter 73, Chapter 76
Another great book in the series. Very excited to get started on the finale...
Didn't realize this was the sequel to Oryx and Crake until after I started it. I have a habit of starting series in the middle. Margaret Atwood seems like a bit of a prophet, in this case (as in A Handmaid's Tale) I hope she's wrong.This is fantastic- inventive, and more than a little scary in today's real world. I was captivated by both the characters and plot and am now headed to read Oryx and Crake, then I'll move on to the 3rd book, MaddAddam. I don't think I'll be disappointed.
adventurous
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No