MaddAddam

A Novel

By: Margaret Atwood

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne, Bob Walter, Robbie Daymond

Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award Finalist, Science Fiction, 2014

A New York Times Notable Book

A Washington Post Notable Book

A Best Book of the Year: The Guardian, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, The Globe and Mail

A GoodReads Reader's Choice

Bringing together Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, this thrilling conclusion to Margaret Atwood's speculative fiction trilogy points toward the ultimate endurance of community, and love.

Months after the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Toby and Ren have rescued their friend Amanda from the vicious Painballers. They return to the MaddAddamite cob house, newly fortified against man and giant pigoon alike. Accompanying them are the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human species engineered by the brilliant but deceased Crake. Their reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is recovering from a debilitating fever, so it's left to Toby to preach the Craker theology, with Crake as Creator. She must also deal with cultural misunderstandings, terrible coffee, and her jealousy over her lover, Zeb.

Zeb has been searching for Adam One, founder of the God's Gardeners, the pacifist green religion from which Zeb broke years ago to lead the MaddAddamites in active resistance against the destructive CorpSeCorps. But now, under threat of a Painballer attack, the MaddAddamites must fight back with the aid of their newfound allies, some of whom have four trotters. At the center of MaddAddam is the story of Zeb's dark and twisted past, which contains a lost brother, a hidden murder, a bear, and a bizarre act of revenge.

Combining adventure, humor, romance, superb storytelling, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Margaret Atwood - a moving and dramatic conclusion to her internationally celebrated dystopian trilogy.

©2013 Margaret Atwood (P)2013 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire.... Her vision is as affirming as it is cautionary, and the conclusion of this remarkable trilogy leaves us not with a sense of despair at mankind’s failings but with a sense of awe at humanity’s barely explored potential to evolve." ( Publishers Weekly)

"Ten years after Oryx & Crake rocked readers the world over, Atwood brings her cunning, impish, and bracing speculative trilogy - following The Year of the Flood - to a gritty, stirring, and resonant conclusion.... Atwood is ascendant, from her resilient characters to the feverishly suspenseful plot involving battles, spying, cyberhacking, murder, and sexual tension.... The coruscating finale in an ingenious, cautionary trilogy of hubris, fortitude, wisdom, love, and life’s grand obstinacy." ( Booklist)

Wish I could give even more stars

Each book is amazing by itself but so much more powerful together , especially in context of recent events.

I liked it - I skipped from Oryx and Crake to this

I am glad I read reviews. I would have been mad to read the year of the flood and find no Snowman and no Jimmy. There isn't much of him here, but there is enough, almost. And its a good story. Maybe its not AS good. But neither is it as sad. I don't know if I will listen to the year of the flood or not. I was not as engaged with these characters as I was with Oryx and Crake cast, except for 2 that aren't in the flood at all.

good

I liked the female narrator, but the male narrator that read Zeb's chapters was so rythmic it was distracting. I had to skip a head because all I could focus on was the reptitive cadence.

Story was good, it was a nice wrap up to these "page turners"

Great read!

Great book. I loved how it ties together all the characters from the two previous books. It might be my favourite of the three.

Sophisticated post-cyberpunk/biopunk

This is my favorite series by Margaret Attwood. I'm still wishing she could work on a 4th book but this one finishes out the series well. I love the world building Margaret did in this series building on ecological catastrophe, dystopian opressive mega-corporations with their army of private security, blind consumerism which is the cause of humanity's downfall, gene manipulation, and the classic cyberpunk trope of cyberspace gaming/chat boards. I enjoyed this more than The Handmaid's Tale which was a slow burn for me in a depressing dystopia.

its great

love it, amazing readers good story. vulgar but enjoyable. I loved all 3 of these books.

Funny Sadness.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yar. But I think I probably would recommend it to them (my friend - assuming they are my friend and not imaginary) 3rd so they could read the first two first before the third one so they could be in order is what i'm saying.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Blackbeard. I enjoyed his story and how he wraps up all.

Which scene was your favorite?

Anytime a story was being told to the Crakers. The opening sequence is at once disorienting in a Clockwork Orangish way and then gets into being HI-larious.

If you could take any character from MaddAddam out to dinner, who would it be and why?

Jimmy. He does not deserve his sadness.

Any additional comments?

I really appreciated the singular way in which the story was told along with the singular-ness of the story.

Great story, great telling

Margaret Atwood has been my favorite author since I read The Handmaid's Tale in high school lit, and she did not disappoint in this series. She's so good at bringing mindfulness to existing ills in the world by showing what their worst manifestations might be.
I like how the latter half of the book(ish) is written like a story that someone is telling verbally or in a journal, and I like that in the narration each of the characters telling a story has their own voice. It's a lot of fun to listen to - with the Crakers much more present in this story than the other two, it's also the funniest of the three.

a bit boring

I skipped most of the Zeb stories. I grew tired of going back to the past after two books. I did enjoy the rest of the story though and the ending crushed me.

Great Cast, Great Story

I read Oryx and Crake several years ago and finally decided to finish the trilogy by listening. Both this book and The Year of the Flood were well performed, funny, and overall great.