The Year of the Flood is a 2009 post-apocalyptic novel by Margaret Awtood, and the sequel to Oryx and Crake. It largely a retelling of the events of that novel, particularly of the apocalyptic event known as the Flood.

Main Characters

God's Gardeners: God's Gardeners are a religious group whose creed centers around an environmentalism somewhat similar to modern freegans. Founded and led by Adam One, God's Gardeners inhabit and maintain rooftop gardens, where they attempt to grow their own food and live separately from the corporations. God's Gardeners attempt to meld science and religion, and Adam One's sermons mix scientific jargon with stories from the Old Testament. The Gardeners are also something of a doomsday cult, predicting that a "Waterless Flood" will soon destroy humanity.

Ren: Ren, who was a member of God's Gardeners since she was a young child, is a gentle, loyal woman who worked in a high-end sex club. She has a strong admiration for Amanda, and was once lovers with Jimmy, one of the central characters of Oryx and Crake. She survived the Flood because she was sequestered in an isolation unit while being tested for sexually transmitted infections.

Toby: Toby, a convert to God's Gardeners, is a practical and sardonic woman. She never entirely accepted the doomsday rhetoric of the Gardeners, but began to value their lifestyle. Her training in homeopathic medicine was of value to the Gardeners, and she was promoted to Eve Six. She survived the Flood through her isolation in a day spa.

Amanda: Amanda is the cynical and charismatic young orphan who moved to the pleeblands as a refugee from droughts that devastated her native Texas, and befriended Ren. She moved in with Ren and was perceived by the Gardeners as extremely pious, but she did not accept their creed and eventually left to become a freelance artist, maintaining her friendship with Ren. She survived the Flood in the isolation of New Mexico's wilderness.

Plot Summary

The novel takes place on the future Earth, in the years directly proceeding and following the outbreak of a deadly pathogen which destroys human civilization and nearly wipes out the human species, an event known in the narrative as "the Flood." The story is told from the perspective of Ren and Toby, and the narrative alters between the portrayal of the two women's attempts to survive in the post-Flood world, and their memories of the world before the Flood, interspersed with sermons and hymns from God's Gardeners.

Before the Flood, Ren and Toby both lived with God's Gardeners. Toby was left destitute as a young woman when both of her parents died, leaving significant debt, so she gave up her identity and took an off-the-grid job at SecretBurgers, a food stand that served potentially cannibalistic hamburgers. There, she was pressured into an abusive sexual relationship with her boss, Blanco, until God's Gardeners rescued her during a protest of SecretBurgers. Eventually, out of fear that Blanco would find her, she went to a spa to receive massive cosmetic surgery and a new identity. She stayed in the spa during the Flood, and continued to live in the building after everyone else died.

Ren joined the Gardeners as a young girl, when her mother, a wealthy Corporation housewife, ran away to the Gardeners with a fugitive. Ren missed her old life until she met Amanda; Amanda was a member of a street gang and befriended Ren through their mutual interest in Amanda's flashy clothing. Ren eventually left the Gardeners to work as a trapeze artist and prostitute in a high-end sex club. When one of her clients accidentally bit through Ren's protective bodysuit, Ren was quarantined to be checked for STI's. This isolation allowed her to survive the Flood.

Ren and Toby each use the knowledge they gained while living with the Gardeners to survive for years in complete isolation. Eventually they meet up with one another and Amanda, and find Jimmy, and several convicts who survived the Flood. They are forced to play a violent survival game that the convicts participated in before the Flood, and in a parallel to the more hopeful ending of Oryx and Crake, the desperate group end up seeing an unknown group of possibly-human survivors in the distance.

Themes

Science and Belief: The novel offers belief as a potential, if flawed antidote to the problems created by human scientific achievement, a somewhat unusual position for a science fiction novel. In the form of the God's Gardeners' mythology, it also presents science and religion as entirely compatible, although not without some compromise of religious narratives, and limitations on applications for technology.

Human Future on Earth: The Flood is understood by the Gardeners to be similar to the Flood of the Old Testament, but created by man rather than God. The Gardeners believe that the majority of humanity live evil lives, and the novel seems to take the view that humanity might not be worth saving. An environmentally apocalyptic future is presented as somewhat inevitable, echoing the common science fiction trope that humanity can no longer continue to inhabit the Earth.