Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood

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*****

Plot: Snowman, a lone survivor of a human extinction event struggles to survive while reminiscing on how it all came to be. He is in charge of caring for a group of genetically-altered humanoids called "the Children of Crake."

     Fantastic! This is the first book I have read by Margaret Atwood, and I can't wait to read more. Oryx and Crake is a deftly handled cross between the Adam & Eve story, a post-apocalyptic horrorland, Orwellian distopia, conspiracy theory, and memoir. The ending leaves the reader wanting more from this fantastic yet all-too-familiar world, and fortunately Atwood has delivered with a sequel, The Year of the Flood.
     Characterization is handled amazingly well, considering what she gave herself to work with. Without giving much away, I will mention that one character is a pure-science genius asshole, another refuses to say a bad thing about anyone, ever, there are environmentalist fanatics, a father who routinely forgets his son's birthday, and the main character is highly unsympathetic as well. But for all that, and likely because of all that, it remains very believable. The reader finds him/herself relating to Snowman/Jimmy's basic selfish, ugly humanity.
     The most chilling part of the story, for me at least, are the pigoons. Pigoons are pigs that were genetically engineered to grow human organs. Encountering them in a laboratory setting was unnerving enough for me, but then I have a slight fear of pigs (thank you, Lord of the Flies). When Snowman crosses paths with them in the wild, things get zombie-like quickly, but pigoons are smart and fast, so it's worse.
     You absolutely must read this book.

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

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***

Plot: A family with five daughters trained in mortal combat live in Regency England, which has been over-run with zombies. When the girls aren't sending the damned souls back to the fires of Hell, they're trying to find husbands.


Let me start off by saying that before reading this book I had never read Pride and Prejudice or anything else written by Jane Austen, nor do I plan to without it having been improved by the addition of zombies or sea monsters or whatnot. From what I gather, all her stories are about silly girls chasing after guys in Regency England. In other words: pointless and boring. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is equally pointless, but at least it's not boring.

I didn't really start caring about the characters until about the middle of the book, when Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth (and she beats the shit out of him.) The only reason I continued reading past page 50 or so was for the zombie scenes. I'm glad I did, though. The ending is superb, and I say that as a person who hates happy endings. There are no happy endings in life; everyone dies eventually.

Aside from Austen's basic flawed plot concept, the only thing I can really complain about is how the revisions were added. I found myself continually looking for the seams in the story - trying to separate the original story from the zombie mayhem. On a superficial level, it was easy (probably too easy, sometimes it felt like Seth Grahame-Smith was trying too hard to stick in a zombie reference), but in some areas I puzzled over what had been omitted, and was distracted from the novel as it stands. Hopefully, it's just me having not read the original and being a little too nerdy for my own good, rather than a fundamental flaw in the writing style. Unfortunately, there is no way for me to answer that for you; you'll have to read the book to find out for yourself.