Margaret Atwood’s new book, The Year of the Flood, is a companion book to Oryx and Crake published 2003. Atwood doesn’t like these books being described as science fiction, she prefers the phrase speculative fiction, and perhaps we really are already on the path of The Year of the Flood. The flood is waterless, a genetically engineered pandemic. Humanity has almost been wiped out, apart from a few groups — the Corporations who control governments and their security arm, CorpSeCorps who control what is left; God’s Gardeners, a cult maintaining gardens on top of buildings away from the marauders and bioengineered animals, living a very ecological life. And two women, Ren and Toby who struggle through this awful world, a world destroyed by experiments in genetic splicing. Their friendship is the bedrock of this novel. It’s thought provoking, especially when you realise some of Atwood’s gene splicing creations have already been researched
I think I mentioned a couple of months ago Michelle Paver’s wonderful series of books, the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. They are for teenagers, but I have found them unputdownable. They are set six thousand years ago, after the ice age but before the spread of farming in north west Europe, where the land was one vast forest. We follow Torak, a 12 year old boy and his quest to rid the lands of evil spirits. I’ve just read the sixth and final book, Ghost Hunter. Torak’s pack brother is a wolf and his friend Renn is learning to be a mage and we follow the three of them over three years. Paver has done a brilliant job in bringing this world to life, a world of people who live in small clans in the forest or up in the icelands, living by hunting and gathering. It’s such a great series of books, I cant recommending it highly enough. The first book is Wolf Brother, where Torak rescues a baby wolf and they become pack brothers, a bond which will last until the end.
