The Windup Girl

Not quite what I had expected.

The windup girl is a fascinating character with her odd movements and disposition, but the book is barely about her, which was disappointing. I found myself somewhat uninterested in the other characters and unsatisfied because I wanted to know more about the windup girl. The integration of Thai and Mandarin (I believe that's what it was) language was interesting but confusing at times. I was sadly disappointed by this book; it had a lot of potential (characters, setting, etc.) but I personally did not think it was executed as best as it could have been. An okay read all in all, but I think it could have been so much better.

8 out of 13 people found this review helpful.

A Must Read

I enjoyed this book tremendously! Bacigalupi takes you into a world where fruits are manufactured, gene ripped, and there is not enough to go around. Where living creatures are also gene ripped into working, living, breathing creations that are both loved and despised. I was lost in his world of yellow card immigrants, Megadonts and Cheshires (I want one). I'd love to see a second book of The Wind-up Girl. Wonderful read. Thank goodness for the release of Pump Six, a collection of his short stories. Tore through it in two days!

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

I find it amazing that people rate this book without reading it...

I bought "The Windup Girl" on a whim. After reading the back I decided to give it a try. Bacigalupi has invented a terrifying future. Filled with Blister Rust and famine. No longer does the human race rely on the old fossil fuel, that source is long gone. So is the idea of a global economy. What once took hours now takes weeks as humans ply the oceans as they once were in times long past. Airplanes are a form of archaic transport and even electricity is a rare resource. It's a world where the seeds of plants are worth mountains of gold and getting enough calories in a given day is an up hill battle. I found this story intriguing and hard to put down. It was well written and the author has the ability to bring his characters to life. Though many authors own that ability, it's still nice to read a book where you feel like you know how a character is going to react to a given situation. The idea of the heechy-keechy windup girls who move in a stutter of stop motion is so interesting. The only thing that gives away the biologically engineered human who walks among the crowds is their flutter of spastic movement. As if they are in a constant wake of a strobe light. This book is deep and will remain one of my favorites for a long time I'm sure.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

One of the best!

If you enjoyed the world-building in Dune, you should be impressed with the interesting and different world Bacigalupi has created--and his writing style is exceptional.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

The most depressing and annoying book I have ever read

I would recommend that you don't buy this book - it is incredibly depressing and annoying. The premise is simple: what happens when you take a 3rd world country, make food incredibly scarce, add population pressures, hostile forces on the border, and remove almost all energy generation technology - no solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, or petrochemical? Answer: you get a complete hell-hole.

That's basically what the writer did - he erased all possible energy generation types in the world - there aren't even any windmills or water wheels. The only thing people have is spring power - advanced springs wound up by humans or animals.

Couple that energy starvation with extreme corruption, and you have a horrible situation. Into which the author drops people made ugly and horrible by the same situation. And some innocents, who get tortured by this reality. This makes for an INCREDIBLY, astonishingly depressing read. It basically ruined my mood for a few weeks.

Plus, as I already said, the author threw out all technology and logic that wouldn't fit with the image behind the book - the image of giant genetically engineered elephants walking around in a factory winding springs. Even if we ignore solar, nuclear, wind, ocean, and geothermal power, there aren't any water wheels - a technology invented over 2000 years ago!!! And this is supposed to be a few hundred years in the future. Besides alternative energy concepts, the author completely screwed up the concept of carbon credits (he has no idea what they are or how they work), as well as genetic engineering in general.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

I didn't enjoy this book.

I still haven't finished this, though I've been trying to for weeks. I am only a hundred pages from the end, and still don't know what's going on. Who are all of these groups of people? You're just sort of thrown into the middle of the story with very little background. Because of this, it was impossible for me to become invested in the story or the characters. I spent most of the time trying to piece together the tiniest of clues that came up in order to figure out the socioeconomic and political structure of a world sometime in the future. Still, a hundred pages from the end, I have no real idea of who the Child Queen is or her significance, so why would I care if her handler gets killed? Yet this seems to be a turning point in the narrative of the windup girl, whose appearances in the novel are brief, dwarfed by longer sections about characters I didn't care about. Oh, well. Just wasn't the book for me. I enjoy sci-fi, and that is how this was categorized, but I didn't enjoy this book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Why isn't this available for the Nook?

Looks like a good read.

1 out of 7 people found this review helpful.

A unique vision.

I bought this book on a whim. I thought I would give it a read through for something to do. I don't think I set it down at all once I picked it up. This book is such a different future from those imagined by most people. I have never read a book like this one before.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an interesting and different possibility for the future.

@Try it if your undecided

Wow! Yo should be an author!! But thx for the info.

Try it even if you're undecided

I had picked this book up and looked at it about a half dozen times then gently placed it back on the shelf deeming it too uninteresting for MY tastes. Then it pops up as a friends' read and makes me rethink my own stance, so I picked it up off the shelf again, didn't look at it, bought it and came home. I read everything else new I had picked up and then I settled down for what I thought would be a laborious read. I found myself frustrated feeling as if I had just stepped off a dirigible or Clipper Ship into a confusing place and time with no context of the times' past. It was unnerving to say the least. I have never read any of Bacigalupi's writing before and had no idea of his writing style so his world was very foreign to me in more ways than one. It's ok though, I got it finally... or at least I think I do. The world building leaves a lot to be desired since we have no explanation of this futures past except what is given via different characters memories. This can be somewhat confusing because in one instance I thought I had a reference of 500 years past the year 2000 but then another character speaks of stories his great grandfather told of foraging in the suburban areas after the fall of fossil fuels. I came to the conclusion it didn't really matter WHEN the novel was taking place but WHAT was taking place. After making this conscious decision I rolled with the punches and came out only slightly bruised. I am not really sure if I like this book or only think its ok, so I'm going with the 'like' option because I'm still thinking. I found the story itself paced slowly but that in a way is possibly intentioned by the author to convey a sense of place as well as leading us, the reader, into the mindset of the cities citizens because many of them are just sitting; waiting to see if they will work, will eat, will die, or will be killed. I found so many different varieties of life conveyed in this book and so many different subtexts it's hard to determine what if any of them were meant by the author or if it's my own need to quantify what I read. All in all a good Sci-Fi read. I say if you're still on the fence about reading it, go for it, you might find out you liked it despite your initial apathy.

A breathe of fresh cyberpunk

Bacigalupi brings a fresh petspective to a genre that many thought only Stephenson could save...

Brilliant

The title character, the Windup Girl, is only one of the many interesting characters that inhabit Bacigalupi's climate changed future. Gene splicing has produced cheshires, that fade in and out of sight, huge elephantine creatures who power treadmill run factories, and the windups, artificial humans, who's souless existence makes them the lowliest of slaves. Human meddling has also made finding sustainable crops a global concern, with vast fortunes to those who control them. The characters are all very real, with their own views, goals and needs. While there are definitely those you love and hate, there is no simplistic right and wrong. Just as in real life, the truth lies somewhere between, and the author leaves it to the individual to find it.

Worth the wait

After reading the synopsis i found this book a little confusing in the fist chapters, however; once i understood how the story was slowly building and linking together, I found the characters to be beautifully rendered and enticing to read about. Read it for sure.

Excellent

The extrapolation quality--the very warp and woof of science fiction--is both superb and all too conceivable. The social commentary implicit in the concept of 'yellow card' is also quite real (and sometimes ugly).

Character development was consistently good and the complexity of the work contributed to my enjoyment.

But foremost this is a darn good read. I look forward to other works by the author.

Recommended highly.

Stay with it, it gets good.

I had a little trouble with this book. The characters and plot build really slow, almost to the middle of the book. I stuck with it and once they were developed, I was in that world and could visualize it as I read.

Masterful Writing

Like all avid scifi readers, I heard of Bacigalupi's Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, and I certainly wanted to read it. I fairly recently read a great short story of his previously, 'Pop Squad', in Brave New Worlds (a very well written, disturbing dystopian story), and I wanted to read more of him.

The Windup Girl is one of the best novels of any genre I have read, in many years. It deserves its Hugo and Nebula awards, as it is a masterpiece of futuristic world building, within the confines of Earth's future. It's characters are sensitively portrayed in detail, and the plot is intricate, surprising in its turns, and penetrating in theme. It is what any aspiring speculative fiction writer wants to achieve. It is a benchmark, a masterpiece. I don't use superlatives like these too often. The novel is that good.

Perhaps the only criticism I can lay before you - and it is more a case of personal taste than a technicality - is that I am not overly enamored of the third person, present tense POV for works of any substantial length. It took me quite a while to avoid the distraction of this less-than comfortable style of writing (albeit, I accept that it was useful for enhancing the immediacy of the tension of the tenor of the novel). Even in Bacigalupi's case, I don't necessarily think pros outweighed the cons with regard to this matter. Given the mastery of the writing, plot, characterization and themes, this criticism is a small matter.

The world building astonishes me. As I hinted above, Bacigalupi creates a future society within the context of a future Earth, but transformed beyond expectation. Genetics is the keystone of what technically (and culturally) drives society, in a backdrop of an energy-starved population. It smack of truth, given the inroads in genetics and the Monsantos of this world. It also smacks of truth with current issues with regard to environmentalism. What makes this particular powerful, however, is representing this future world in the microcosm of a future Thailand. This was masterful, and Bacigalupi clearly researched this part of the world meticulously. I use the term 'microcosm' lightly, because it turns out that this future Thailand is a special place, unique and more than just a representative of humanity-to-come - it is in many ways the center of humanity's universe.

Bacigalupi paints his characters well, and not a single one of them is just noble and righteous. They are all flawed, due to the circumstances of their lives, and because, quite simply, they are human. Even the New People. The key characters, Anderson, Hock Seng, Kanya, Jaidee, and The Windup Girl (Emiko), are expertly drawn and attract reader empathy, and yet are scrutinized for their frailties, whether they were self-constructed or were thrust upon them.

Anyone with a predilection for speculative fiction, and particularly dystopian themes, will be immersed in The Windup Girl, and will want to read more. If you have discomfort with the Third Person, Present Tense POV style, try hard to ignore it - it's still well worth it.

Five sparkling stars.

A good solid read

Over all this was a very good read. His view of the future is unique and somewhat scary. The author has some views of climate change and genetic modification that I strongly disagree with but don't let that get in the way of enjoying the story. My only criticism is that the ending is a bit soft. He could have wraped things up a bit better IMO.

Not for the easily-offended

This was an incredible tale, but I don't think it is for everyone. I found the story compelling, quite willing to totally immerse into this somewhat grim possible future. But, I think the underlying theme is that there will always be bad people, that humans are unable to stop from going to war. Wish there was a sequel...I'd like to know more about the new people.

Good short read

A nice short read with a fairly straightforward plot. At times, it seems like there are too many story lines revolving around too many characters, even though the plot lines are all interconnected. At the end, I was still not sure which character was the actual protagonist, though the author may have intended it that way. I did enjoy the book and would recommend it to others who enjoy this genre, but I can't help feeling like the author could have done so much more with the world he created.

Good

Very good story, seems to leave some things out that made it slightly hard to follow at times but was a compelling read worht the cost.