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Loading... The Windup Girl (2009)by Paolo Bacigalupi
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Very enjoyable and fresh. The environmental themes where very resonant for me. I wanted to like this, I really did. Unfortunately, that didn't really happen. One caveat, I was stupid and didn't finish this book when I first took it out of the library and then I wasn't able to renew it. Back to the library it went while I waited for my turn again. A month passed before I got the book back and could finish it. This large break in the middle was not good for my reading experience. All that aside, I just didn't really like the book. I found there just wasn't enough meat and detail about the main characters and that the story seemed to jump/start/stop too much. I'm not sure if that was on purpose as a way of mimicking the movements of Emiko or if it was just my perceptions of it. This book is awful. Well, at least the first 12% of it was. It was so awful that i really just couldn't be bothered to wade through any more of the trudging, depressing, miserable writing. I feel i gave it a fair go because if a writer can't sort his mess out in the first 12% of a book then the book can be deleted as far as i'm concerned. All we get are depressing characters that you really have no inclination for any level of empathy towards, you just wish they'd all go away and someone interesting turn up, but no one does. Just miserable, depressing people who drink alcohol and smoke and live in a kind of steampunk dystopia which hasn't been explained as to how all this mess came about. In fact, it all just feels totally messy, disjointed and made up by someone who really hasn't made any attempt at understanding whatever genre this is supposed to be. So, at the end of 12%, NO THANK YOU! Deleted! Awesome backdrop, interesting characters, nifty plot twists - what more could you ask for? In my case I'd like a little light. Except for the ending it's a fairly dismal tale, dark enough that the little spark at the end doesn't even try to illuminate all that went before it. It's not going to make my all time favourite list, but it's very much worth reading. Grab a copy if you haven't read it yet. And your cat will love it :-)
It is a reasonably convincing vision of a future rendered difficult and more threatening than even our troubled present. 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. 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. 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." One of the strengths of The Windup Girl, other than its intriguing characters, is Bacigalupi's world building. You can practically taste this future Thailand he's built [...] While Bacigalupi's blending of hard science and magic realism works beautifully, the novel occasionally sags under its own weight. At a certain point, the subplots feel like tagents that needed cutting. AwardsDistinctions
What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when this forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? This is a tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation. No library descriptions found.
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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It's a haunting story of a city, Bangkok, in a future suffering from the sins of the present. Rising oceans threaten to flood it. Genetically engineered food and animals haven't worked out quite exactly as they were intended. Fossil fuels are no longer plentiful and cheap. All of these are presented in ways that require little suspension of disbelief. Only a sense of wonder.
The characters and setting kept me turning pages. They are compelling and vivid, with genuine goals and obstacles. Driving the plot are true mysteries, believable villains, and unexpected twists. This is by no means a happy story, on any level. But it is one worth reading. (