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In this novel, Atwood imagines a future that is at once utterly foreign and depressingly inevitable. As in Blind Assassin, she sometimes overplays the current intellectual and political sources of her dystopian--there's a little bit more telling and a bit less showing than I would have liked. This is not to say that I disagree with any of her political concerns; to the contrary, they are so sensible, and emerge so organically from most of the story-telling, that there's no need for her to hamfistedly emphasize the point. But also as in Blind Assassin, she writes beautifully, and her eye for the telling detail is as good as any other literary sci-fi author I can think of (e.g., P.K. Dick, W. Gibson). I am very much looking forward to reading the remainder of this trilogy.