I devoured The Giver last month and almost fainted when I heard that Lois Lowry wrote more books in the series. So of course it was off to my local library to put in a request because EVERYONE IS READING IT. I can see why–this book isn’t exactly a sequel, but it does provide some unusual counterpoint to the Stepfordian world Jonas inhabited in The Giver. Gathering Blue begins with Kira, who is mourning the sudden death of her mother. She is crippled with a […]
Is Mankind Capable of Remaking Itself, asks Atwood
This final book in the trilogy offers a hopeful conclusion to Atwood’s frankly horrific depiction of our possible future. Maddaddam is the name of an action-oriented splitoff from the God’s Gardeners cult who—together with Crake’s bioengineered “children” who survived the so-called waterless flood that wiped most of humanity off the face of Earth—drive the action of this last book. While the Maddaddam survivors forage the ruins of their civilization for such things as tampons and flashlight batteries, they also learn how to raise a new […]
End of the World as Told by the Survivors
Unexpectedly, Atwood does not pick up in Year of the Flood where Oryx and Crake ended. Rather, she covers the same time-line as she did in her first novel, only this time she gives us a different viewpoint with which to greet the end of the world. In her first book, we learned that the world’s corporations had hired brilliant men—Crake among them—to bioengineer humanity in their own image—materialist, hedonistic, narcissistic. The profits have never been so good, the disparities between rich and poor never […]
Another Grim Dystopic Future by Atwood
Another of Atwood’s famous dystopic novels, this one the first in a trilogy based on an apocalyptic future after the genetic manipulators and profit-mongers have prompted a sort-of “Noah’s Flood” in the form of an engineered plague to wipe the slate clean. Crake, the genius who created the plague, is gone but his “children” live on as a handful of bioengineered innocents intended to repopulate the world under new—Crake’s– guidelines. Crake’s appointed “shepherd” for this flock is Jimmy, now known as the Snowman, who managed […]
Genetic engineering, a nuclear holocaust, human identity, and twoo wuv?
The first thing I will say is this: Ruins, despite its bleak title, had possibly the happiest ending in a YA dystopian trilogy that I remember reading in quite some time, and, admittedly, I was kind of relieved. I was getting the sense that many YA authors have been under pressure from publishers — and their own ambition — to write ‘shocking’ or ‘original’ endings, so they’ve been steered away from neat resolution and feel-goods. But an ending can be positive without being trite, you know? […]
Yet another disappointing third book in a YA dystopian trilogy.
I am exhausted from being yo-yoed around by this book. Up and down and back around. I was prepared for disappointment after Prodigy and the way the series seemed to be heading, but even so I was still disappointed even over that prior disappointment. The ending to this series has cemented my resolve not to start YA series without 1) High recommendations from people I trust, and 2) Having a pretty good idea that the series isn’t going to careen off a cliff at the […]