The Windup Girl

The era of The Windup Girl is approximately 200 years into the future and is in the midst of a second midieval dark age; social progress has been in reverse for the past 100 years. However, we join the world at what might be the start of the new "Expansion". The characters can feel it, things are changing, things are happening. The list of not-so-great-things-to-have-happened is short but profound: The earth is terribly hot. The oceans have risen, flooding major cities. Genetic plagues have ravaged the landscape. Easily obtainable fossil and nuclear fuel are no more. Most importantly, food is scarce.

All that matters are calories and those that can create them. Unfortunately, planting a seed or raising livestock is hopelessly out-of-date 20th-century thinking. Natural seeds and creatures which are not strong enough to resist the genetic nightmares that stalk the earth simply have no chance. Thankfully the genetically created food by the calorie companies will save you. If you pay.

If you do not pay then your country will starve. Riots will follow. Then the slaughter. Rape. Barbarity. Genocide.

Amidst the wreckage lies Thailand, which much like today's Thailand is wracked by internal dissention. Nevertheless it has survived the flooding, survived the plagues, and manages to continue to survive through its ingenuity and cold-hearted realism. But it only just survives. Doom litteraly laps against Bangkok's walls.

The interesting setting is only the appetizer, the main course are the wonderful, flawed, haunted characters that inhabit the maelstrom: a hard-edged secret-agent type (the calorie man); an ostensibly helpless genetically engineered woman (wind-up girl); a survivor of mass racial slaughter (the yellow-card); the second in command of one Thai faction (Kanya); the ghost of a betrayed commander of the White Shirts (the Tiger of Bangkok), plus other characthers such as a pimp, slum lord, and mercantalist that help give life to the story.

Where do the loyalties lay? Is there a new genetic plague brewing in one of the factories? Does anyone have a heart? Can you blame them if they don't?

A fine book. Reminds me a bit of Neuromancer in terms of the setting being almost familiar to our time, yet of course, they are worlds apart. The author leaves it up to you to catch up with the reality the characters live in.

I gave this book an 8 out of 10, which is a very high grade for me. I have only awarded a 10 out of 10 to one book (Catch-22) and a 9 out of 10 to two books (Neuromancer and Wizard and the Glass). The 8 out of 10 compares to other 8's I have assigned: 2001: A Space Odessy, Dune, Ender's Game, and Speaker for the Dead.