The Windup Girl

Sigh...I've been so busy lately, and I haven't had as much time to read! That will likely be the case for the next several weeks, but I've got some quick reads up next.

Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl takes place in a sort of post-apocalyptic world that has been devastated by major crop diseases. The currency of this world is the calorie. Wars are fought, crime occurs, and major political upheaval all centers around food - what little of it remains. Thailand serves as the backdrop of this dismal future and Bacigalupi paints it vividly. His mind is extraordinary - this is a sci-fi book that was well thought out and researched. However, the characters fall flat and the plot is underdeveloped. The main character (if there is one - there are so many characters) is Emiko, a genetically manipulated android, originally from Japan, now serving as a sex slave. Her savior is Anderson, a worker for a calorie company. They try to escape the sex slave scene and the government, culminating in an epic explosion and the revealing of secrets.


Now, that does have the potential to be a great story - but 2/3 of the book is spent setting things up, introducing characters, and exploring the world. If this were an epic 500-600 page book, that might work. The world ends up being pretty well developed, but the plot lines minimal and the characters dismal. There are perhaps 20-plus characters that play a role in the story, and the only one who is developed at all is Emiko. The rest are hollow shells and it's honestly hard to keep them all straight. If they were better developed or more interesting, I would have made the effort to figure that all out. Not the case here.


Bacigalupi is clearly an idea-man with a general knack for writing. I'm slightly interested in reading more by him, but I'm not ready to risk another book with weak characters and an underdeveloped plot.


Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars


19 books, 82 days...at this rate I'll read 84 books