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A review by honeypamda
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
3.0
2.5 stars. I'm going to give 2 separate opinions on this book. One on the book itself as if it were a stand alone and one as the sequel it is.
As a stand alone I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I would have been more generous and given it 3.5 to 4 stars had it not been a sequel. The perspectives of the 3 very different characters were interesting, but often not quite different enough in voice. The ending seems rushed. The challenge for the outsider from Canada infiltrating the Aunts was not explored nearly enough and it read more like an uncomfortable interlude than a seriously dangerous mission. Danger was hinted at, but until the end of that part of the book none materialized. However, the overall story of the crumbling of the hierarchy of Gilead and the interpersonal relationships of the main characters was interesting.
In either review the book starts out slow. It picks up, gets slow again, then picks up. If I wasn't already emotionally invested, as a viewer of The Handmaid's Tale, in seeing how the story ended I don't know that I would have finished before I had to turn the book back in to the library.
As a sequel this book was a 1.5 to 2 stars. It adds nothing to the original book. It reads like fan service to viewers of The Handmaid's Tale. I am a loyal viewer of The Handmaid's Tale and as such I recognized the main characters right away. I was happy to see them at first, but over time that happiness dulled. The writing style was so much more polished than the original book, which I shall now refer to as THT. I understand the change as these are 3 new perspectives in 3 different circumstances, but part of what I found that made THT so emotionally engaging was the disjointed and sometimes visceral impact of the gritty style of a story being told by a fugitive refugee.
Also, some things happen too easily for the characters. They have struggles, but some of the solutions are unbelievably easy or simply unengaging. The ending is too neat and clean. It's not 100% Pollyanna happy, but it's close. Too close for a sequel to THT.
I don't know that I think THT really needed a sequel, but I do know that if it did this wasn't the sequel it needed.
As a stand alone I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I would have been more generous and given it 3.5 to 4 stars had it not been a sequel. The perspectives of the 3 very different characters were interesting, but often not quite different enough in voice. The ending seems rushed. The challenge for the outsider from Canada infiltrating the Aunts was not explored nearly enough and it read more like an uncomfortable interlude than a seriously dangerous mission. Danger was hinted at, but until the end of that part of the book none materialized. However, the overall story of the crumbling of the hierarchy of Gilead and the interpersonal relationships of the main characters was interesting.
In either review the book starts out slow. It picks up, gets slow again, then picks up. If I wasn't already emotionally invested, as a viewer of The Handmaid's Tale, in seeing how the story ended I don't know that I would have finished before I had to turn the book back in to the library.
As a sequel this book was a 1.5 to 2 stars. It adds nothing to the original book. It reads like fan service to viewers of The Handmaid's Tale. I am a loyal viewer of The Handmaid's Tale and as such I recognized the main characters right away. I was happy to see them at first, but over time that happiness dulled. The writing style was so much more polished than the original book, which I shall now refer to as THT. I understand the change as these are 3 new perspectives in 3 different circumstances, but part of what I found that made THT so emotionally engaging was the disjointed and sometimes visceral impact of the gritty style of a story being told by a fugitive refugee.
Also, some things happen too easily for the characters. They have struggles, but some of the solutions are unbelievably easy or simply unengaging. The ending is too neat and clean. It's not 100% Pollyanna happy, but it's close. Too close for a sequel to THT.
I don't know that I think THT really needed a sequel, but I do know that if it did this wasn't the sequel it needed.