I finally got around to reading the last book in Atwood's MaddAddam Triolgy, MaddAddam. Having read many books since The Year of the Flood, it was nice for me to see that this book included a synopsis of the previous novels, which is something I prefer over the author including little reminders in the text itself (though she ended up doing that anyway).I was expecting her to continue in the vein of the previous novel, but with Zeb this time. Instead, the book is mostly from Toby's point of view, with Zeb telling her his life story in brief snippets. I liked that Atwood finally started writing more about the current happenings instead of doing mostly flashbacks, but...then I got annoyed because practically nothing was actually happening. They try to help Jimmy (who is by now just a crazy guy that no one really likes), and try to survive as best they can, while preparing for a battle with the Painballers who are still out there, posing a threat to them. The most action happens in the last fifty or so pages, and this is disappointing because it's not from Toby's perspective anymore, but from one of the Crakers. And, thus, the battle is told in a...less-than-engrossing way.
The worst thing about the book, and which really made me glad to finish it, was the fact that Toby was extremely needy and jealous. Zeb and Toby end up in a relationship early on in the book, and Toby spends at least one paragraph per chapter (and often more) making sure the reader remembers that she is in love with Zeb and hopes that he's going to be hers exclusively. It gets very tiring very quickly. You'd think that Atwood, a feminist, wouldn't make her female main character so stereotypical and young-adult-love-triangle-ish. I don't remember getting that vibe from her in The Year of the Flood. Maybe I just forgot it, or it wasn't that prevalent. In any case, MaddAddam really suffers from this.
In my opinion, Atwood should have stopped with Oryx and Crake, since that was a classic by itself. The sequels were pointless, unless she wanted to emphasize feminist concerns. And if that was her goal, why make her leading female character so dependent on a man? Why make her male characters so much cooler than the female characters? (Though I suppose she tried to cut back on this by making Jimmy seem stupid at the end, when I'd been sympathetic towards him before). It gives me the feeling that she was merely trying to milk this story for all it was worth, rather than actually trying to produce a good work of art that made people think about feminist, environmental, and dystopian ideas.
