Ankur Sinha reviewed The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Review of "The windup girl"
4 stars
In a dystopic world where cities have been/are being swallowed by the ocean, genetic modifications/viruses and the sort have killed billions in many countries and destroyed ecosystems and large corporations that provide disease resistant strains of food and tech wield far too much power, this book focuses on happenings in Thailand.
The world building is great---lots of ideas that I hadn't run into before, so it was certainly fresh. It also gets points from me for not being based in the west. I think reading the short story (the calorie man) and the novelette (the yellow card man) that came before this one would perhaps have given me a clearer idea of the world---this one sort of assumes one is familiar with it.
It does start a little slow (again, maybe it took me longer to understand the scene because I hadn't read the earlier texts) but it picked up …
In a dystopic world where cities have been/are being swallowed by the ocean, genetic modifications/viruses and the sort have killed billions in many countries and destroyed ecosystems and large corporations that provide disease resistant strains of food and tech wield far too much power, this book focuses on happenings in Thailand.
The world building is great---lots of ideas that I hadn't run into before, so it was certainly fresh. It also gets points from me for not being based in the west. I think reading the short story (the calorie man) and the novelette (the yellow card man) that came before this one would perhaps have given me a clearer idea of the world---this one sort of assumes one is familiar with it.
It does start a little slow (again, maybe it took me longer to understand the scene because I hadn't read the earlier texts) but it picked up pace and held my attention quite quickly. Lots of things happen, different characters come together. Politics, hunger for power, rage, revenge, helplessness, but also kindness, friendship and loyalty. All in there.
Totally worth a read.
Content warning: the book includes graphic depictions of rape (that I'm not entirely certain were necessary in such detail)