Atwood uses third-person narration for Toby's accounts and first-person narration for Ren's.

Much of the story is told through flashbacks with the two main characters separately surviving the apocalypse described in the previous novel, each reminiscing about their time in the God's Gardeners religious movement and the events that led to their current situations. The plot follows two characters, Toby and Ren, whose stories intertwine with each other and, at points, with major characters from Oryx and Crake. God's Gardeners have their own set of saints, all honoured for their environmental activism, such as Saint Dian Fossey and Saint Rachel Carson. This prediction becomes true in a sense, as Crake's viral pandemic destroys human civilization. They are vegetarians devoted to honoring and preserving all plant and animal life, and they predict a human species-ending disaster, which they call 'The Waterless Flood'. God's Gardeners are a religious sect that combines some Biblical practices and beliefs with some scientific practices and beliefs.

The Year of the Flood details the events of Oryx and Crake from the perspective of the lower classes in the pleeblands, specifically the God's Gardeners who live in a commune at the Edencliff Rooftop Garden. Although, Atwood sees them as 'simultaneous' with the three novels all taking place at the same time and not in sequence. This is the second of Atwood's trilogy, with the final book being MaddAddam. It answers some of the questions of Oryx and Crake, develops and further elaborates upon several of the characters in the first book, and reveals the identity of the three human figures who appear at the end of the earlier book. Atwood continues to explore the effect of science and technology that has caused this plagued world, focusing on the theme of religion through the environmentally focused religious movement of the God's Gardeners. The novel is told through the perspective of protagonists Ren and Toby, with the main characters of Oryx and Crake, including Jimmy and Crake having minor roles. The earlier novel contained several brief references to the group. The book focuses on a religious sect called the God's Gardeners, a small community of survivors of the same biological catastrophe depicted in Atwood's earlier novel Oryx and Crake. The novel was mentioned in numerous newspaper review articles looking forward to notable fiction of 2009. The Year of the Flood is a novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, the second book of her dystopian trilogy, released on September 22, 2009, in Canada and the United States, and on September 7, 2009, in the United Kingdom.

Margaret atwood flood