The Windup Girl

Books | Fiction / Science Fiction / General

3.5

(263)

Paolo Bacigalupi

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. What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution?

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More Details:

Author

Paolo Bacigalupi

Pages

544

Publisher

Hachette India

Published Date

2012-08-07

ISBN

9350094274 9789350094273

Community ReviewsSee all

"Interesting book, definitely a worthwhile read, but it felt incomplete. "

CaitVD

"Fantastic and love that it takes place in Thailand. Seed banks!"

Greg Martinez

"Wonderfully written. Sort of the fiction sequel to Peter Zeihan’s The End of the World is Just the Beginning. "

M W

Matthew Wood

"Upon finishing The Windup Girl I realized that I liked the book much better towards the end than I did when I started it. I felt the book was very dull and dry.....full of mean-spirited characters. Then, along came 'The Windup Girl' Emiko.....and she made the book a much better story to read. I found myself being intrigued and interested in all that she said and did. She was so human-like and I wanted her to really be human because she was so much a better person than those living in the book. There was a lot of horrible and disgusting abuse towards Emiko....especially a very savage rape scene that left me shuddering and sickened by it. It is interesting how human nature responds to something that is seen as less than the beings that we are......how we can abuse and use something or someone that we feel is trash or way beneath us. I felt that the way the story was written.....all the characters were hard to discern if they were good or bad....each had good qualities that shined at times and then very poor qualities that would make the reader disappointed in their choices. Overall......the book was confusing at times and you could never keep track of who was winning the war because the sides changed so much...it gave you an image of a world full of despair and people who would basically do almost anything to stay alive in it. I thought the book was dry at first but did pick up speed halfway through...but it really wasn't my favorite type of read."

Tracy Walters

"Engaging, beautifully written. "

N m

Nicole m

"I made it 80 pages then finally admitted that I didn't care. The last 30 pages I had been skimming anyway, hoping that my interest would set in. The author spent too much time on trivialities and not enough time on the meat of the story—like explaining why the world is in such bad shape. Constant references are made to past events but never explained—an omission that was a constant source of frustration for me."

J Y

Jen Y

"My favorite book written during the last few years!"

Dave