#30: Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood

A theater director, drummed out of his summer stock company Shakespeare Festival, plots a long-range revenge in Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed.

Hag-Seed is part of a new series of re-imagined Shakespeare works from the Hogarth Shakespeare Project.  Atwood (probably best known for The Handmaid's Tale) takes on The Tempest, creating a world within a world as the director decides to put on The Tempest at a local prison.  Before too long, the play mirrors the actions in real life.

Very clever, with a lot of cool elements, but at some points feels more like an exercise than a fully realized work.  Nonetheless Hag-Seed is an enjoyable read and has lots of little nuggets to mine for Shakespeare fans (as well as Atwood's).

I listened to a nice audiobook version of this novel on loan from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

#14: MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

A man-made plague has torn through the world, leaving an eclectic group--including former eco-cultists, scientists and their lab creations, and psychic pig/human hybrids--to forge a new path in MaddAddam, the end of Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic trilogy (begun with Oryx and Crake).

Not really a stand-alone novel, but certainly satisfying for those who enjoyed the first two (as this one reveals the colorful history of Adam One and Zeb, as well as other choice nuggets). 

For general readers, how the characters try to explain what happened to a young boy called Blackbeard, inadvertently starting a new world history/religion, is particularly interesting.

I am a Margaret Atwood fan, and though this trilogy does not stand up to The Handmaid's Tale or some of her other works, it is still worthwhile as a whole for apocalypse fiction fans.

I checked this out on audiobook from Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#7: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

After a man-made virus sweeps across the planet, we follow the lives of two survivors--a young woman locked in a sex club, and an older woman hiding out in a spa--as they learn how to survive in a transformed world in Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood.

The Year of the Flood is the follow-up to Atwood's acclaimed Oryx and Crake, with the same setting and several of the same characters threaded throughout.  Of interest to readers of Oryx and Crake is the fact that the sequel solves the mystery shown in the closing pages of the first novel.

For general readers, however, I think it is still pretty interesting, with two new main characters, and how their paths have crossed over time, playing out in its story.  Overall not as emotionally resonant as Oryx and Crake, but worthwhile for fans.

If you read this book, I would suggest the audiobook version that I enjoyed (on loan from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond Indiana) as it featured three strong voices, and some musical interludes, a good production overall.