Bookworm Wednesday

hey!!  It is bookworm Wednesday, on a Wednesday, at least it is going to be Wednesday for the next hour, so go me.  Anyway this week's review is

The year of the flood by Margaret Atwood.

The plot itself is rather difficult to describe, so for your benefit here is the amazon.com synopsis.

"The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life--has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.
Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers...
Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away...
By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and uneasily hilarious, The Year of the Flood is Atwood at her most brilliant and inventive."

First off when i read this book I did not realize it was part of a series, and though it read like a stand alone, I am sure there was information in the first book that would have been helpful both in filling in details and flushing out characters.  

Second, I did not enjoy this novel all that much.  Though I do enjoy dystopian futures, I felt that this book was written in a manner that made me feel like I wasn't quite "in" on it.  Atwood's characters are compelling, and the storyline was interesting but I never felt immersed in the story.  I just couldn't find it in me to care all that much about what was going on,  and after four hundred pages of my commitment the ending left me going "huh?"  Not much of a payoff.  (of course learning this is a trilogy explains that at least in part).

Atwood is heralded as being a literary master and this novel on many other sites has nothing but glowing reviews.  To me however I found it a little confusing, and more than a little improbable.  The world is ending but all the characters live to run into each other at terrible times.  Atwood's end of world females are reduced to sexual fodder, and though that is nothing new in the end of times writings, it was somewhat surprising coming from this source.  

All in all it is not a recommendation on my part, unless you have a lot of time and perhaps if you had read the other book first.