MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Title: MaddAddam
Author: Margaret Atwood
Pages: 416
Publisher: Anchor Books
Genre: Dystopian Fiction
Source: Personal copy
Format: Paperback
Summary (back of the book)
In this final volume of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of the population. Toby is part of a small band of survivors, along with the Children of Crake: the gentle, bioengineered quasi-human species who will inherit this new earth.
As Toby explains their origins to the curious Crakers, her tales cohere into a luminous oral history that sets down humanity’s past – and points toward its future. Blending action, humor, romance, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Atwood – a moving and dramatic conclusion to her epic work of speculative fiction.
Review
This book was a place where a lot of the material from Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood came together for me. We get a chance to see Crake from yet another angle, and understand what was happening on his end before the pandemic occurred. We also get to see, through flashbacks, how Zeb fits into the mix. I always found him to be a bit of a wild card in The Year of the Flood, so it was really fun to understand his backstory, where he comes from, and how he fits into what Crake was plotting. Same with Adam, who I also found to be kind of an enigma from The Year of the Flood. After finishing MaddAddam you get a firm sense of who he is and how he fits into the story.
Overall, although I found this story to hold a rather grim look of this version of earth, I think it ends on a hopeful note.
I loved every aspect of this series. The world building continued to be as amazing in book 3 as it was in book 1. I can clearly see the reality that Atwood creates. There’s much to say about this story beyond the basic lives of the characters, which is something I also love about everything I’ve ever read by Margaret Atwood. For so many reasons, this trilogy holds a special place in my heart.
Please consider using this link to get a copy for yourself while also supporting this site! Click here if you want to start the series at the start with Oryx and Crake, and click here if you want to go for the box set (which is what I did… my original read was from the library and I bought the set to keep on my shelf).
