I have re-read the original novel many times, and I think one of its major achievements is its poetic and insular nature-essentially making the rise of Gilead (and its reworking of society) a chamber piece in the the house at which Offred is stationed, and furthermore, in her mind during her many periods of musing during forced solitude and stillness. The two younger character voices blended a bit in my mind, but they were both well done.
In this case, I found the multiple narrators very effective, as it really made the older character POP. I did check the audio at normal speed, and some of you may find it a tad on the slow side, but that is easily remedied with the app. I listen at 3.5x, and everything sounded great. We have already been shocked by the Puritan-esque, post-revolutionary Iran-inspired world of the Republic of Gilead, but what Atwood does with "The Testaments" is give us vibrant, deep, rich characters who are inspiring and flawed and add another layer to the fictional land we know so well, while at the same time updating the implicit warning of "The Handmaid's Tale" for the modern world. Is "The Testaments" as powerful and groundbreaking as "The Handmaid's Tale"? No, but I don't think any of us expected it to be. I certainly understand things picking up as everything comes together, but it did seem both a little sudden and a little too quick. I am not experienced with literary analysis, but a few layman's observations that I would consider minor detractions are a slightly too streamlined/convenient plot to get one of the narrators advancing toward where she needed to be, as well as the pacing of the the final quarter of the book. My favorite part was the fleshing out of a secondary character from "The Handmaid's Tale", as that character moved into one of the narrator roles and gained both complexity and humanity. It builds upon the world she created over 30 years ago, staying true to the form and style of the original, but with effective changes as well (e.g. **No spoilers** Atwood did so many things right with this book.
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