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The Windup Girl: Winner of Five Major SF Awards by [Paolo Bacigalupi]

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Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl: Winner of Five Major SF Awards Kindle Edition

by Paolo Bacigalupi (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

1,655 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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WINNER OF THE HUGO, NEBULA, LOCUS, JOHN W. CAMPBELL AND COMPTON CROOK AWARDS

The Windup Girl is the ground-breaking and visionary modern classic that swept the board for every major science fiction award it its year of publication.

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's calorie representative in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, he combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs long thought to be extinct. There he meets the windup girl - the beautiful and enigmatic Emiko - now abandoned to the slums. She is one of the New People, bred to suit the whims of the rich. Engineered as slaves, soldiers and toys, they are the new underclass in a chilling near future where oil has run out, calorie companies dominate nations and bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

And as Lake becomes increasingly obsessed with Emiko, conspiracies breed in the heat and political tensions threaten to spiral out of control. Businessmen and ministry officials, wealthy foreigners and landless refugees all have their own agendas. But no one anticipates the devastating influence of the Windup Girl.

Discover the multi-award winning The Windup Girl: both a heart-stopping dystopian thriller and a razor-sharp vision of our near future.

'Bacigalupi is a worthy successor to William Gibson' Time Magazine

'An astounding novel' Interzone

'Not since William Gibson's pioneering cyberpunk classic, NEUROMANCER (1984), has a first novel excited science fiction readers as much' The Washington Post

'An exciting story about industrial espionage, civil war, and political struggle, filled with heart-thudding action sequences' Cory Doctorow

'Clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year'Publishers Weekly (starred review)

'It's ridiculous how good this book is' Techland

'Postmodern Bangkok springs to life in Bacigalupi's brilliant dystopian tale of culture clash, recalling the best of China Mieville and Neal Stephenson' Library Journal

'The pace of the book is fast and relentless. It is a dark vision . . . As a portrait of a world far from our own but not unrecognisably so, it is finely done'Times Literary Supplement

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374 pages
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Orbit
Publication date

October 21, 2010
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko. Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Paolo Bacigalupi is a rising star in the science fiction community having just won the Nebula award for The Windup Girl. He is also the winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story and two Locus Awards for best collection and best novelette. Paolo lives in western Colorado with his wife and son. Ship Breaker is his first novel for young adults. --This text refers to the unknown_binding edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Noted short story writer Bacigalupi (Pump Six and Other Stories) proves equally adept at novel length in this grim but beautifully written tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation. Capt. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai of the Thai Environment Ministry fights desperately to protect his beloved nation from foreign influences. Factory manager Anderson Lake covertly searches for new and useful mutations for a hated Western agribusiness. Aging Chinese immigrant Tan Hock Seng lives by his wits while looking for one last score. Emiko, the titular despised but impossibly seductive product of Japanese genetic engineering, works in a brothel until she accidentally triggers a civil war. This complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best, will garner Bacigalupi significant critical attention and is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the unknown_binding edition.

From The Washington Post

Not since William Gibson's pioneering cyberpunk classic, "Neuromancer" (1984), has a first novel excited science fiction readers as much as Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl." I missed it last year when the book first appeared, but three recent events have made it a timely addition to the summer reading list.

First, just two weeks ago "The Windup Girl" was awarded the Locus Magazine Award for best first novel. Second, in May Bacigalupi received the even more prestigious Nebula Award -- given by the Science Fiction Writers of America -- for best novel of the year. Those are convincing literary endorsements. But the third reason to pick up "The Windup Girl" is for its harrowing, on-the-ground portrait of power plays, destruction and civil insurrection in Bangkok.

Even though the book is set in an imagined future, its depiction of the city during violent unrest feels astonishingly true-to-life. Inadvertently, Bacigalupi offers a window on what it must have been like in Thailand's capital during this spring's strife and bloodshed. Though he stresses in his acknowledgments that the novel "should not be construed as representative of present-day Thailand or the Thai people," its overall vision of this wondrous and decadent city is nonetheless very close to that found in such contemporary thrillers as John Burdett's "Bangkok Tattoo."

By the end of the 22nd century, the world has been ravaged by deadly viruses, the disappearance of entire species, the rising of the oceans and the loss of all power based on petroleum. Sailing ships and dirigibles transport goods. Computers still exist, but they are operated by treadle-power, like old-time sewing machines. Guns shoot "razor disks" rather than bullets. Factories employ megadonts -- genetically altered elephants -- to turn their dynamos. Even "the Empire of America is no more," while something unspeakable happened in Finland. Not least, gigantic corporations like PurCal and AgriGen have become supra-national forces, with their own armies.

The Thai kingdom has so far survived, in part because it has sealed itself off from the outside world, and through draconian measures managed to keep the food supply relatively safe. The Environment Ministry -- supported by the brutally patriotic "white shirts" -- maintains stringent border and biological security: It has been known to burn entire villages to the ground at the very first instance of deadly "blister rust," "cibiscosis" or "genehack weevil." However, in recent years, the Child Queen has allowed the upstart Trade Ministry to gain power and to encourage some small-scale foreign investment in the kingdom.

Pretending to be a developer of innovative "kink-springs," Anderson is in fact an agent of AgriGen, assigned to Bangkok to orchestrate a covert yet aggressive initiative by the Des Moines-based corporation. He employs Hock Seng, an aging but resilient Chinese who lost his shipping company, family and very nearly his own life a few years previous during the genocides in Malaya. Trusting no one, he dreams of re-establishing his name and wealth. By contrast, Jaidee, the so-called Tiger of Bangkok, is the pugnaciously idealistic captain of the white shirts, determined to preserve his country against the onslaught of foreign influence and corruption. His unsmiling Lt. Kanya suffers from some dark burden on her soul.

And then there is Emiko, the windup girl. Windups, or New People, are essentially genetically modified test-tube babies, creche-grown in Japan. In other countries they are branded and loathed as genetic trash, without true souls. All windups move with a herky-jerky gait, like puppets on invisible strings.

In essence, Emiko has been designed to be a supremely beautiful, compliant geisha. Obedience has been built into her DNA. Her skin has been made ivory smooth by reducing the size of her pores. Never intended to function in a tropical climate, Emiko has nonetheless been callously abandoned in Bangkok: Her patron decided "to upgrade new in Osaka." She was then bought by the unscrupulous Raleigh, a survivor of "coups and counter-coups, calorie plagues and starvation," who now "squats like a liver-spotted toad in his Ploenchit 'club,' smiling in self-satisfaction as he instructs newly arrived foreigners in the lost arts of pre-Contraction debauch."

Raleigh's nightclub soon features a very special sex show: Each night the brutalized Emiko must suffer the attentions of an inventively sadistic co-worker. Afterward, her body is for hire by anyone seeking a forbidden, transgressive thrill. The girl lives in near-suicidal despair.

Until the night she meets Anderson, who tells Emiko of an enclave of windups, "escapees from the coal war," dwelling in the forests to the North. Emiko soon dreams of fleeing her sordid destiny and making her way, somehow, to this village.

From the windup, the smitten Anderson learns of a mysterious Gi Bu Sen, who has developed a new blight-resistant fruit that has recently appeared in the Thai markets. Protected by the government and living in luxurious seclusion somewhere, this Kurtz-like farang can only be the renegade AgriGen scientist Gibbons, the greatest generipper in the world, long thought to be dead. He must be found and restored to the corporation. It is because of his genius -- and the kingdom's hidden storehouse of carefully preserved seeds -- that Thailand has been able to stay "one step ahead of the plagues."

As the novel advances, the political machinations grow increasingly tense. General Pracha, Minister Akkarat, a sinister adviser to the queen named Somdet Chaopraya, even the so-called "Dung Lord" all vie for power. Meanwhile, the increasingly troubled Lt. Kanya converses with a ghost, one who knows her secret. While Emiko may be the titular windup girl, Kanya is the novel's woundup woman, a human kink spring under intense psychological pressure. When everything begins to fall apart, these two will determine the fate of Krung Thep, the City of Divine Beings -- Bangkok.

Readers of science fiction will recognize multiple influences on this excellent novel: Cordwainer Smith, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, China Mieville and even, possibly, Margaret Atwood, who proffers a similar vision of post-apocalyptic want, fanaticism and gene-manipulation in "Oryx and Crake" and "The Year of the Flood." Clearly, Paolo Bacigalupi is a writer to watch for in the future. Just don't wait that long to enjoy the darkly complex pleasures of "The Windup Girl."

bookworld@washpost.com

Reviewed by by Michael Dirda
Copyright 2010, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the unknown_binding edition.

Review

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR BY TIME, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, LIBRARY JOURNAL, LOCUS AND THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD, THE NEBULA AWARD, THE LOCUS AWARD, THE COMPTON CROOK AWARD, AND THE CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD

“It’s ridiculous how good this book is. . . . Bacigalupi’s vision is almost as rich and shocking as William Gibson’s vision was in 1984 . . . I hope he writes 10 sequels.”
—Lev Grossman, TIME

“Reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s Blade Runner.... densely packed with ideas about genetic manipulation, distribution of resources, the social order, and environmental degradation ... science fiction with an environmental message, but one that does not get in the way of its compelling story.”
—Sacramento Book Review

“This complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best ... clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A captivating look at a dystopic future that seems all too possible. East meets
West in a clash of cultures brilliantly portrayed in razor-sharp images, tension-building pacing, and sharply etched characters.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

"When it hits its sweet-spot, The Windup Girl embodies what SF does best of all: it remakes reality in compelling, absorbing and thought-provoking ways, and it lives on vividly in the mind."
—The Guardian

"Bacigalupi never slides into moralism or judgement ... Ultimately that's what makes this debut novel so exciting. It's rare to find a writer who can create such well-shaded characters while also building a weird new future world."
—io9
--This text refers to the unknown_binding edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—In a future Thailand, calories are the greatest commodity. Anderson is a calorie-man whose true objective is to discover new food sources that his company can exploit. His secretary, Hock Seng, is a refugee from China seeking to ensure his future. Jaidee is an officer of the Environmental Ministry known for upholding regulations rather than accepting bribes. His partner, Kanya, is torn between respect for Jaidee and hatred for the agency that destroyed her childhood home. Emiko is a windup, an engineered and despised creation, discarded by her master and now subject to brutality by her patron. The actions of these characters set in motion events that could destroy the country. Bacigalupi has created a compelling, if bleak, society in which corruption, betrayal, and despair are commonplace, and more positive behavior and emotions such as hope and love are regarded with great suspicion. The complex plot and equally complex characters require a great deal of commitment from readers. Even the most sympathetic people have darker sides, and it is difficult to determine which character or faction should triumph. This highly nuanced, violent, and grim novel is not for every teen. However, mature readers with an interest in political or environmental science fiction or those for whom dystopias are particularly appealing will be intrigued. If they are able to immerse themselves completely into the calorie-mad world of a future Bangkok, they will not be disappointed.—Karen E. Brooks-Reese, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the unknown_binding edition.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Reviewers seemed to struggle with The Windup Girl, but in the same way one struggles with a great work of art. All were bewildered by the world Bacigalupi has created and by his ability to create characters that effectively dramatize its many differences from (as well as crucial similarities to) our own. Yet all felt the need to dwell upon some aspect of the book that did not quite sit right with them--whether it was the intense (though not gratuitous) violence or the sleights of hand Bacigalupi uses to craft the plot. Perhaps such reactions were not surprising, though, for a book that many hailed as a masterpiece of the unsettling. --This text refers to the unknown_binding edition.

Review

Bacigalupi is a worthy successor to William Gibson: this is cyberpunk without computers Time Magazine Not since William Gibson's pioneering cyberpunk classic, NEUROMANCER (1984), has a first novel excited science fiction readers as much ... Paolo Bacigalupi is a writer to watch for in the future. Just don't wait that long to enjoy the darkly complex pleasu The Washington Post An exciting story about industrial espionage, civil war, and political struggle, filled with heart-thudding action sequences, sordid sex, and enough technical speculation for two lesser novels Cory Doctorow This complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best, will garner Bacigalupi significant critical attention and is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year Publishers Weekly (starred review) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Author

Paolo Bacigalupi is the award winning author of adult and young adult fiction. His work has won the Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell, and Locus award among others, and been nominated for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. His short fiction has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and High Country News. Bacigalupi lives in Western Colorado with his wife and son. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0047T70VW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orbit; 0 edition (October 21, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 21, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 785 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 374 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #275,320 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,146 in Hard Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #1,277 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #1,710 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
1,655 ratings

About the author

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Paolo Bacigalupi

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Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in WIRED Magazine, Slate, Medium, Salon.com, and High Country News, as well as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His short fiction been nominated for three Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story of the year. It is collected in PUMP SIX AND OTHER STORIES, a Locus Award winner for Best Collection and also a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly.

His debut novel THE WINDUP GIRL was named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. Internationally, it has won the Seiun Award (Japan), The Ignotus Award (Spain), The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis (Germany), and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France).

His debut young adult novel, SHIP BREAKER, was a Micheal L. Printz Award Winner, and a National Book Award Finalist, and its sequel, THE DROWNED CITIES, was a 2012 Kirkus Reviews Best of YA Book, A 2012 VOYA Perfect Ten Book, and 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist.

He has also written ZOMBIE BASEBALL BEATDOWN for middle-grade children, about zombies, baseball, and, of all things, meatpacking plants. Another novel for teens, THE DOUBT FACTORY, a contemporary thriller about public relations and the product defense industry was a both an Edgar Award and Locus Award Finalist.

Paolo's latest novel for adults is The New York Times Bestseller THE WATER KNIFE, a near-future thriller about climate change and drought in the southwestern United States. A new novel set in the Ship Breaker universe, TOOL OF WAR, will be released in October.

Customer reviews

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3 star		12%
2 star		4%
1 star		5%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Melanie D. Typaldos

Things are not looking good for Bangkok...or the rest of the world.

Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2017

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This is a unique novel. Some people have claimed that it is steampunk rather than science fiction. I admit, there are steampunk elements but the novel has a sound basis in speculative fiction. The world of the novel is not an impossible world, as has been my experience with steampunk.

Windup Girl is not an easy novel to read. It's long, there are a lot of characters, the world is complex, people's motivations are diverse as are their personalities. The local, future Bangkok, also takes some time to adjust to, at least for me since I have never been to Bangkok. It takes a while to sink into the world and know your way around. That is, as well as any of the characters do at any rate, which is not very well. Everyone has a different view of what's going on and is keeping secrets from all of the other characters. No one is simple. No one is easy to relate to. The Windup Girl, Emiko, is probably the most identifiable character, which says a lot.

I enjoyed the novel. I enjoyed the challenge of reading and understanding. I enjoyed the author's depth of understanding of this alien landscape. The use of Thai words and concepts gives the world substance and character.

While I am giving it five stars -- which it deserves -- I caution potential readers that this is not a book for everyone. If you're looking for something light and uplifting, this isn't it.

One last point, a negative one, there is a huge unresolved issue at the end of the book. Normally I can forgive authors for not clearing up every little thing, but this was like getting punched in the face. Come to think of it, I think I'll knock it down to four stars just for that.

36 people found this helpful

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dementad

Scienceless fiction

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2018

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Sorry, but there is very little science in this dystopian fantasy. There are many logical inconsistencies as well, and what you end up with is a Monsanto-takes-over-the-world fairy tale set in Thailand. If you really want to understand the locale and the references, you will spend a lot of time looking up Thai-isms, because the book is replete with them. The only real kudos I can give this book is that the author need not fear winning the Bad Sex in Fiction award, because the few gratuitous pornographic passages show that he knows more about that than he does about science.

28 people found this helpful

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Genetic engineering and power struggles in 22nd Century Thailand

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2021

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The primary science in this science fiction is genetic engineering. A superb novel, "The WIndup Girl" tells the intersecting stories of five main characters in Bangkok, or Krung Thep (City of Divine Beings) as it is known in the Thai language in abbreviated form, the name used in the book. Here are some aspects of the vivid world created by Bacigalupi without spoilers.

The setting is the late 22nd Century. Catastrophic climate change is far advanced, and played a role in the end of the 20th/21st Century Expansion. Krung Thep would be under water if not for a vast sea wall. The most powerful organizations in the world are the Midwest Compact, a consortium of agribusiness corporations in North America (the country is never specified), and China, with its own genetic engineering capability. The world is coming out of a long Contraction and the possibility of a new Expansion is in sight.

Genetic engineering, not climate change, drives the story. Plagues have ravaged the world, and both humans and crops have been devastated. It is intimated but not stated, not known, whether the deadly diseases are natural or malevolent products of laboratories. Regardless, the Compact and China use their access to resistant strains of crops to leverage power over the rest of the world.

Animals too have been engineered. In the new low-carbon energy environment Thailand uses huge "megadonts" as a power source. While never explained, it seems evident that they are native Thai elephants enhanced with DNA from mammoths or mastodons. "Cheshires" are a superior engineered type of cat that has replaced the cats we know today with the chameleon capacity to blend with their surroundings. They are super-efficient carnivores, and fortunately for humans they are not the size of sabertooth tigers.

Humans too have been engineered. The "windup girl" is the product of Japanese engineering, designed to serve as secretary, executive assistant, or prostitute. Other Japanese "windups" are designed as super-soldiers.

The Thai setting is well-developed. Buddhism is a major element of the story, mainly traditional but with a twist. A dedicated environmental activist who died acting selflessly to protect Thailand from plagues is considered a bodhisattva and is worshipped alongside the Buddha. The great river the Chao Phraya features prominently.

Two powerful Thai factions fight for dominance -- the Environmental Ministry, in charge of defending against plagues, which it has done more successfully than most countries, and the Ministry of Trade, which wants to open the country to the benefits of a new Expansion.

The author clearly did his research on Thailand. It would not be surprising at all to find that he had lived and worked there, but as it turns out he did not. Bacigalupi did live and work in China, and initially set the novel there before deciding on Thailand instead.

"The Windup Girl" won both the Hugo and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2010, and those honors are well deserved. While not as stylistically innovative, it strikes me as being similar in many ways to John Brunner's great novels "Stand On Zanzibar" (1969) and "The Sheep Look Up" (1972).

It is a brilliant and compelling novel!

2 people found this helpful

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Ckalba22

Wonderful book

Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2017

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Interesting book with great characters and a nice jump into Thai culture and language with a bit of a sci-fy twist---hard scy-fy in my opinion. The books appears to be based on sound ethnography and history of the region along with sound science being stretched or extrapolated to a 'near-future' setting in which most characters, in all of their predicaments, take all kinds of risks to gain some semblance of their various 'old ways' and places now seemingly gone or rapidly disappearing in the rearview mirror. A beautiful book of action laden with numerous palpable description, to the point of actually smelling the streets or the dunk or feeling the rumble of the FEW ''old' gasoline/diesel cars left. Read it and get ready to travel the canals of Bangkok in a genetically modified future world!

13 people found this helpful

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Mary Soon LeeTop Contributor: Fantasy Books

I loved the setting, but not the people in it.

Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2016

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This science fiction novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and I see why it did so. The setting is vivid, detailed, fascinating: a future Bangkok where the sea is held back by dikes and levees, where humans have been ravaged by disease, where very few plant species are still viable, where genetically engineered New People have been created but are despised by the Thais, where megodonts (huge elephants) power factories. I loved the setting, but not the people in it. The point of view shifts between five characters--an American businessman, a New Person, two Thais, and a Chinese refugee from Malaysia. These five characters were well-drawn and convincing, but I didn't *like* them. And so I enjoyed this book less than many other less imaginative, less well-told stories. N.B. The novel is written in the present tense, which I sometimes find annoying, but here was very smoothly done.

16 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Aspidistra

Well written but appallingly grim

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 11, 2019

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There is so much to like about this book. The clever plot is satisfyingly complex and the characters are diverse and intelligent, each struggling to make their way in a post oil culture. Setting the story in a politically corrupt Thailand of the future should fill it with colour, culture and interest.

Although I loved the premise of a disease ravaged economy and the scramble by agri-giants for healthy gene stock, the book, which presumably pretends to some kind of reality, is let down by some very shaky science. I liked the idea of megadonts but can't believe that there was no solar power or wind power, battery technology or vegetable oil or alcohol powered engines, or even nuclear power for that matter. Neither could I accept that anything emerging from a vat of algae would increase spring efficiency or generate a human viral plague, or believe in a convenient bacterium that fizzles through steel in seconds. I could go on (and on!) but life is short

I could have overlooked this (hell, most sci fI abandons inconvenient reality) if it hadn't been so difficult to like any of the characters. Most of them are pretty unpleasant and do very unpleasant things. The Windup Girl herself is so self pitying and debased by the brutality the author inflicts upon her, I recoiled and she is given little to do other than suffer. There is no let up from the grimness which the author dwells on endlessly and repetitively. Nobody is happy and there is no leavening humour, friendship, or even a likeable hero to lift the darkness. Frankly, I was quite relieved when I finished.

8 people found this helpful

Keith Crawford

Problematic in all the best ways

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 30, 2021

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Genetically engineered crops and plagues have wiped out the greater portion of the world’s agriculture, ending the era of great nations and open borders as humanity struggles to survive the latest pestilence. Anderson Lake is a company man trying to discover the secrets of Thailand’s success, one of the few relatively civilised nations remaining. Jaidee is an incorruptible head of the White Shirts, protecting the nation from potentially toxic illegal imports. Hock Seng is a “yellow card”, a once wealthy Chinese refugee from a violent uprising that murdered his family. Their lives will be turned upside-down by of Emiko, a “windup girl”, an android, a sex-slave, and the person who may be about to start a revolution.

Did that all sound complicated? Well, it is. The world-building in this book is incredible, and the sheer scope of Bacigalupi’s imagination makes up for all sorts of difficulties. For example, all the characters are racist. It makes sense for the story, but it’s hard to like them! Having endowed us with a super-complicated world, the author then reaches for the literary stars by using third person present: “Lake reaches for the glass.” Great for judges of literary prizes, not great for readers trying to understand the fourteenth made up word on the page. Finally, we have the magically wonder girl, whose voyeuristic sexual abuse is excused because it gets her superpowers, and she has her revenge. Nope, never heard that trope before.

Why am I being so super harsh on a book I gave five stars? Because if any of these things in the early chapters put you off, stick with it. As the story hurtles into the final act you come to care about these characters, murderous gits or not. This book grows from imaginative world building to powerful character stuff – it has things to say, and things that will stay with you. Bacigalupi has taken risks with style, form, format and character, and they pay off.

One person found this helpful

Graham

Unexpected brilliance

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 19, 2021

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The Windup Girl starts slowly, getting you used to the characters and the setting and the technology and the history of the world they’re living in, as it goes on the storytelling accelerates constantly and the climax comes at breakneck speed with twists and turns which are shocking and yet perfectly logical within the story. It is tied up well with few unanswered questions despite asking so many. Beware if you have a weak stomach, there are descriptions of sexual violence not for the faint of heart, similar to some of the tortures suffered by characters in A Song of Ice and Fire.

One person found this helpful

anonymous

I was expecting better given the awards

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2017

Verified Purchase

I was expecting better given the awards.
For me the ideas were just not very good. How can everything be powered by giant elephants if food is so scarce and controlled? Why do springs need to be bathed in algae? How do springs store energy anyway? Ok its a coal powered car - I get it. Yes coal powered tanks too, very good thank you.
Its good that this story considers the consequences of climate change, I wish there was more about what the Expansion was etc.. The genetic engineering ideas were good, definitely.
But some really cheezy parts e.g. when Hock goes to visit Jabba the Hutt aka the Dung Lord. What every happened to him any way? The Kanya group of people were poorly described; I didn't care about Thai boxing and what they got up to. The 'bullet time' when Miko moves fast was cheezy. As was having her her as a pliant sex toy who gets ideas.
The descriptions of Thailand were not particularly evocative; I;ve visited that part of the world. And all the italics for foreign references got tedious.
Also, the tone of the narrative felt slightly chinglishified. You know; like abit of caricature of Asian ways of speaking that also leaked into the narrative language itself.

7 people found this helpful

Dean

First 25% is a CHORE. After that, pure gold.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2017

Verified Purchase

I bought this on a recommendation and was, initially, disappointed. The start of the book is anything but engaging. Each chapter is about 30 minutes long but feels longer due to the writing style. I was very tempted to just put down the book after a few chapters. I persevered though and I'm REALLY glad I did. Once you reach about 25%, the book picks up and becomes much more interesting. After about 50-75%, the book is just exploding with awesomeness and i really got into his world. The setting is dystopian, but feels so damn real.

I'd recommend if you like Paolo's other books and think you can get through the initial character building chapters. They felt like a chore, but the endgame was worth the pain and time. By the end, I had completely bought in to his universe.

2 people found this helpful

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