The Year of the Flood Reading Response 2

As we get deeper into the book, it’s interesting to see how the  Gardeners interact with each other and also how their system is built. I really enjoy reading about how Amanda and Ren interact with each other. Their relationship with each other is really sweet, especially in a book where it seems everyone just thinks about themselves. Lucrene’s relationship with Ren on the other hand is somewhat appalling seeing how she basically just severes her relationship with Ren when convenient for her.

I find it somewhat astounding how people trust the Corps even though they seem to do nothing to help the people and instead kill those who don’t agree with what they do. The idea of  the Painball system existing in the future somewhat horrifies me. It reminds me of the Hunger Games and how people basically hunt each other and the strongest will survive and eventually be let out. In our current society we would basically be putting serial killers together and letting them kill each other off. It’s kind of horrifying to think that the worst serial killer would eventually be let out into society. It makes no sense to me why we would let the strongest of the criminals out.

I feel like the book needs to expand more on the goal of God’s Garderner and what they hope to achieve in more detail. The book starts off really slow for me because there is no real idea of what these people are trying to achieve or if they’re actually achieving anything as time goes on. It seems as if I’m just reading about their daily lives which isn’t bad but the plot could be better.