When I first began to read Oryx and Crake I was pretty bored. I felt like it dragged on and like nothing interesting was happening. So much of the beginning focused on Snowman who used to be called Jimmy and he wasn’t a very exciting person at first.
As I continued to read of course I started to understand things more clearly and Jimmy actually grew on me. The story is told from his perspective and it is interesting to see how his character developed as he tried to survive in a wasteland. The story begins after some sort of world ending event with few survivors and then flashes back to his childhood and how he got to where he is now.
Oryx and Crake are the other two main characters in the book. Oryx is a woman that Crake, Jimmy’s bestfriend hires to be his prostitute and a teacher to his followers. Crake believes that she is the same young girl he had observed years before in pornography. Oryx ultimately has a relationship with both Jimmy and Crake, but Jimmy does not tell Crake about his betrayal. This story was a little more science fiction than what I like, but interesting none the less. There is a similarity to the beginning of the world in the Bible, with references to Crake being the creator of God, which I’m assuming that Jimmy is God and Oryx is the guardian of the animals. The animals by the way are all some kind of fusion of two or more animals which is a little scary.
It seemed to me that they all betrayed each other in one way or the other. Jimmy betrayed Crake by having a relationship with Oryx and Crake betrayed Jimmy by secretly vaccinating him and not making him aware of what was about to happen to their world.
Although this style of book is not my preference, I would definitely recommend it to someone who enjoys futuristic science fiction novels.
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