The book received mostly favourable reviews in the press. "The Globe and Mail", "Maclean's", and the "Toronto Star" ranked the novel high among Atwood's works and Helen Brown, for the "Daily Telegraph", wrote "The bioengineered apocalypse she imagines is impeccably researched and sickeningly possible: a direct consequence of short-term science outstripping long-term responsibility. And just like the post-nuclear totalitarian vision of "The Handmaid's Tale", this story is set in a society readers will recognise as only a few steps ahead of our own." For "The New Yorker", Lorrie Moore called the novel "towering and intrepid". Moore wrote, "Tonally, 'Oryx and Crake' is a roller-coaster ride. The book proceeds from terrifying grimness, through lonely mournfulness, until, midway, a morbid silliness begins sporadically to assert itself, like someone, exhausted by bad news, hysterically succumbing to giggles at a funeral." Joyce Carol Oates noted that the novel is "more ambitious and darkly prophetic" than "The Handmaid's Tale". Oates called the work an "ambitiously concerned, skillfully executed performance".