Words of a Bibliophile

For me the MaddAddam trilogy doesn't feel like a real trilogy in a sense that each novel continues the story of the previous one. The second book, The Year of The Flood, doesn't pick up where first book Oryx and Crake left off but instead tells the same story during the same timeline, only from the point of view of different characters. This final installment does move the post-apocalyptic plot forward but a lot of it also consists of flashbacks of yet another side of the same story above.

While O & C is narrated by Jimmy but the more intriguing character for me is Crake (and not enough is told about Oryx), MaddAddam is mostly Zeb's back-story. But I was more interested in learning about Adam One, and not just because Zeb's tough guy wisecracks can get annoying. I saw interesting parallels between Crake and Adam One.

There's some interesting commentary in this novel about the things which have been eliminated from the Crakers as a species during their creation because Crake believed they caused human misery, and whether or not the conflicts that arise within the group of surviving humans are indeed cause by these factors. However, I'm not sure I liked the impression that I got about the role of women in these conflicts. Like in Flood I appreciated the touches of humor in the story, especially with the innocent Crakers and their wide-eyed wonderment about the odd ways of humans. The ending is unexpectedly quite hopeful considering the bleak mood of the entire trilogy. But after finishing it I think it wouldn't have been much of a loss if I had stopped reading after the first book.