91. Read and review 100 books (1/100) The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood

'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...'

I have been in love with Margaret Atwood since my year 11 English Literature teacher introduced her to me by setting her novel The Handmaids Tale as part of our tertiary entrance curriculum! Since then she has released two pseudo-sequels to this novel, Orxy and Crake (2003) and The Year of the Flood (2009) which provide a back story to The Handmaids Tale but quite successfully also act as stand alone stories for those who may not have been exposed to Atwood's work before.

Reading this book while on my honeymoon in Belize, sitting on a lounge chair under an umbrella with a cocktail in one hand and my beloved kindle in the other I once again became engrossed in the dystopian future envisaged by Ms Atwood, one where appalling man made genetic mutations roam the earth and the last remaining humans, those who survived the waterless flood, hide in fear from the monsters, the weather and other humans!!

The novel follows the degeneration and breakdown of society and eventually humanity as a whole as corporations take on the role of government and people are forced to conform or perish - allowing crazy experiments to be conducted without consideration of morals, ethics or consequence. Atwood explores religion, science, environmentalism, genetic engineering, corporatism and pop culture in this book making you question your current values and, whether or not this is indeed fiction or if eerily something similar could, potentially, come to pass.