The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2) in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Jan 18, 2018 Debbie rated it really liked it

MaddAddam, book 2.

God’s Gardeners is a religious group that combines Christian theology with environmental principles. They have long predicted that a waterless flood will wash away all but the faithful. When the flood finally comes, Toby and Ren, former members, find a way to survive. Since this is Atwood, life is horrible for everyone in this post-apocalyptic future, but she also helpfully highlights the many ways in which women have it SO MUCH WORSE.

My one complaint is that so many of the p ...more

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Oct 18, 2009 Jeff Scott rated it really liked it

Very timely story about the problems with using up the earth and genetic engineering and pharamceuticals run amok.

Oryx and crake covered the same territory five years ago. I felt the imagery there was more horrific and the engineering here is more muted. Anyone who, after reading Flood, wants more detail should read Oryx and Crake.

Ren, in Year of the Flood crossover with oryx and crake, dates Jimmy, knows about pigoons. I thought they were pig and baboons to make them more suitable for human Very timely story about the problems with using up the earth and genetic engineering and pharamceuticals run amok.

Oryx and crake covered the same territory five years ago. I felt the imagery there was more horrific and the engineering here is more muted. Anyone who, after reading Flood, wants more detail should read Oryx and Crake.

Ren, in Year of the Flood crossover with oryx and crake, dates Jimmy, knows about pigoons. I thought they were pig and baboons to make them more suitable for human organ transplants. However, in Oryx and Crake it makes them very smart and very dangerous. They are one of the most terrifying creature in oryx and crake. Many of these creations from crake play minor roles in Flood. those things terrified poor Jimmy. The blue people are explained as well. I'll spoil the ending of crake. Jimmy thinks everyone has been killed by the plague. He sees three people, two soldiers and a woman. He thinks they will harm the blue people and the story ends on a cliffhanger with Jimmy trying to kill off the last of the humans while he is already badly injured, a suicide last gasp to stop mankind from harming the planet further. Flood re-writes that a bit, making the ending of Flood less bleak than Crake. A wonderful story and I recommend both for the full experience.

Best passages:

The Gardeners were right about that part: reading someone else's secret words does give you power over them. P. 222

She opens her eyes: tears on her cheeks. I wasn't in the picture because I am the frame, she thinks. It's not really the past. It's only me, holding it all together. It's only a handful of fading neural pathways. It's only a mirage.

Surely I was an optimistic person back then, she thinks. Back there I woke up whistling. I knew there were things wrong in the world, they were referred to, I'd seen them in the onscreen news. But the wrong things were wrong somewhere else.

By the time she reached college, the wrongness had moved closer. She remembers the oppressive sensation, like waiting all the time for a heavy stone footfall, then the knock at the door. Everybody knew. Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them out, because what they were saying was both so obvious and unthinkable.

We're using up the Earth. It's almost gone. You can't live with such fears and keep on whistling. The waiting builds up like a tide. You start waiting for it to be done with. You find yourself saying to the sky, Just do it. Do your worst. Get it over with. She could feel the coming tremor of it running through her spine, asleep or awake. It never went away, even among the Gardners. Especially, as time wore on, among the Gardners.
P 239

And the Internet was just a jumble of false and true factoids that no one believed what was on it...or they beloved all of it which amounted to the same thing p 293

...Death always comes without knocking. Why now? Is the cry. Why so soon? It's the cry of a child being called home at dusk, it's the universal protest against time. Just remember dear friends: What am I living for and what am I dying for his the same question. P 326 ...more

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Jan 26, 2015 Julia rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi-fantasy, audio-books, religion, distopian

I enjoyed this book, and thought it was a good pre-quel to Oryx and Crake. Imho the "sermons" of Adam1 might have been a little bit shorter... But I am really looking forward to the next installation, and in fact *must* get my hands on it tomorrow. ...more

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