We are back in the post-apocalyptic world introduced in the author’s earlier work Oryx and Crake where few have survived the deadly pandemic, Oryx unwittingly unleashed.
Toby has survived and is holed up on a rooftop garden, with access to food and water for now. Ren’s survival is due to a temporary stay in an isolation facility that saved her from infection. It caters to her every need, but the bad news is that she is locked inside and everyone outside seems to be dead.
We get each girl’s back story, Toby in the third person and Ren in the first. And they have a connection – both had spells as members of the ‘God’s Gardeners’ religious cult that preached self-sufficiency (useful now!), environmental awareness, and the inevitable demise of humanity in a ‘waterless flood’, which has come to pass in the form of the pandemic.
Toby and Ren’s pasts teem with characters and action against a backdrop of an all too believable future where current societal trends come to fruition. Global corporations dominate a bipolar society of the haves, who work for them, and the have nots, who don’t.
How Toby and Ren got where they are, and whether they will remain isolated or manage to make contact with other survivors, provide a strong narrative hook that engages the full 500 pages.
Roll on vlume three
of the trilogy – MaddAddam.
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