Book Eighty Five 2014:

Oryx And Crake by Margaret Atwood

Why, why, why has it taken me so long to read (and review!) this incredible book?

Snowman is the (seemingly) only human left alive on Earth with a species he calls the “Crakers” – a sort of human-hybrid of uncertain origin to begin with. The story then flicks back and forward to his childhood and college years (in our future – a world in which there are very much the haves and the have-nots) and to Crake and Oryx, his best friend and… well I’ll leave you to find that one out yourself.

I will be honest and shame myself yet again by saying that I read my first Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale) earlier this year and she is rapidly becoming one of the favourite SF authors. See, it’s hard to do post-apocalyptic well, even harder to just let your imagination fly into extraordinary places and not get bogged down in the prosaic.

She imagines a world both worryingly plausible and impossibly far-fetched. I cannot tell you just how much I enjoyed it. It is beautiful.

Do not miss this book. I’m on to the sequels Year Of The Flood and Maddaddam after Xmas.

EDIT – This is why the internet is the greatest thing. Ever.