Part 2 of the MaddAddam trilogy – much better than part 1!

Ok so if you read my review of book 1 (Oryx and Crake), you know that I didn’t love it.  I nearly love this one.  I totally love the characters.  They’re fully formed human beings, with personalities, thoughts, beliefs, and failings.  That means a lot in a book.  You care when things happen to them.  I love character development!  Anyway, this book travels back and forth in time, which I also love.  We learn people’s backstories, and also where they are in the “present”, which is also the time of Jimmy / Snowman and the Children of Crake.  It’s all about God’s Gardeners, which were mentioned in Oryx and Crake, but not really detailed.  They’re vegetarians, and gardeners (duh), and they are also kind of holy.  They are given Adam and Eve names and numbers, depending on their status.

Two things delighted me so far.

1. There’s a little boy named Glenn who runs some secret errands for Pillar (one of the Gardeners – Eve 6).  He says something about “making” better people in the future, and I just knew it was Crake.  I was so excited to hear the connection.
2. Again with Pillar!  She says to Toby “Clever girl”, which is a favorite Jurassic Park quote of mine (and like a billion other people):

I’m listening to this as an audiobook in my car.  Three separate people do the voices.  There’s one lady who voices Toby, one lady who voices Ren, and a dude that voices Adam 1.  Unfortunately most of Adam 1’s talking is more proselytizing, so I usually fast forward some of him.  His voice is good though.  The women’s voices are great.  I love when the voice talent actually elevates the story.

So, people are torn apart and reunited regularly in this story. We’ve also now met Jimmy from book one. I really love how all of this odd coming together! I think someone commented on my review of Oryx and Crake that that book set up the world for this book. They were right. We meet all sorts of people and strings come together.

I really really liked this book!