La chica mecánica

I wanted to like this book, but my suspension of disbelief was hard to overcome. I had particular problems with the energy systems described. Any explanation I came up with for the things like mega-elephants winding springs, like fossil fuel bans or running out and electricity becoming expensive, make no sense in a world where the street lighting are gaslights burning "approved" methane.

That is a problem given how much of the early part of the book is mostly "world-building". It takes far too long for the actual story to really get moving. Once that happened, I was much more able to ignore the scenery/details that didn't make sense to me.

I suspect that if I hadn't been listening to the audiobook (at 2x speed) in the car and switching to another book safely would have required pulling off and downloading something else, I might not have powered through long enough to let the story kick in.

There definitely were some interesting ideas and, upon reflection from the end of the book, the various plot threads were pulled together nicely, but I almost didn't see that because the world didn't make 100% sense to me.

book review of bacigalupi's 'the wind-up girl' (2009)

the only regret i have with this book is that i haven't read it sooner. it has just been sitting on my desktop for months after i have gotten it. now that i am almost finished with it, i am going to write my assessment.

the windup girl belongs to the science fiction subgenre of 'biopunk.' it is kinda like 'cyberpunk.' whereas the scientific field that is fictionalized and explored in cyberpunk is that of computers and cyberspace, biopunk looks at genetics - biodiversity of crops, and genetic manipulation techniques for example. In both, there is the idea of 'the street finding its own uses for things.' The effects of technologies are often unintended and the black market and its illegal activities are depicted constantly.

what stands out with the windup girl also is the setting. the future is bleak, far bleaker than in any of the gibson novels i have read. whereas with gibson it is the western and highly-developed megalopolis that is looked at, the humid tropical city is what bacigalupi describes. the characters move and interact with each other in this space. the miasma of odours and sights and sounds made me feel claustrophobic. there is a suffocating quality to it, though not as much as for example in dan simmons' depiction of calcutta in 'song of kali.'

the characters also make this book highly compelling. you feel their their motivations through their pasts which are often painful and dark. in some, it is their present that is their nightmare, having gone down in life from a more affluent and comfortable station. the wind-up girl, which is the titular character is a beautifully tragic creature in so many ways than one.

the story starts out slow, taking you into the gears and workings of its world. it has a good structure and the plot unfolds slowly, then picks up speed, faster and faster. besides being action-packed, the book tackles the big issues of loyalty, humanity, and survival amidst tragedy.

i won't make this longer anymore so you can go and start reading. overall this is the best book i have read this year so far.

Full disclosure: I think I pulled the trigger on this purchase a long time ago after someone suggested Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It might have been a dumb mistake, but I wasn't going to let it go to waste.

And then, it wasn't really a dumb mistake because it wasn't a bad book.

Bacigalupi (owner of an awesome last name) elegantly presents a full multidimensional dystopic vision. Rather than resorting to a horrible preface to set the scene, the setting of the novel is presented gradually over the first third of the story through the memories and conversations of characters. It's subtly accomplished and satisfying and realistic.

The author also sets a nice pace with plenty of action, plenty of scheming, logical motivations and structures for the plot. It moves quickly and never seems fantastic. My willingness to believe was never strained.

Where The Windup Girl misses, however, is a pretty big deal. I didn't care for, nor connect with, any of these characters. I'm not sure who I was intended to grasp onto as my surrogate or guide in this story. Bacigalupi comes pretty close to making the novel work despite this deficiency, but leaves me just short of the connection I need.

The near future world of the Windup Girl is an unpleasant place. Granted this makes for an interesting setting, and the author manages that very well. Throughout the book I wanted to learn more and more about the world. We’re exposed only to Thailand, and only one city and its local area. Everything else is only hinted at or described mostly indirectly. I can't say how far into the near future it is. It could be along the lines of 50 years in the future, or maybe as many as 150, but I think that's pushing it.

The characters… were all very human. Eexcept for the title character, being a genetically modified “New Person”. Unfortunately the characters being so human in such an awful world made them rather unlikeable and untrustworthy. As a reader I want to have someone I can root for and no one in The Windup Girl made me want to root for them, not even the windup girl herself.

The story is very busy, and it takes a long while to really bring all the threads together. In fact it seemed for quite a long time that there were actually multiple stories that didn't tie together being told all at once. Eventually they all do come together, but it takes a bloody revolution and the destruction of the city to do it, not to mention killing off most every named character in the book!

On the other hand, since I like the author personally, and thought his world building was intriguing, I’m curious enough that I’m going to try reading his book of short stories (Pump Six and Other Stories).

**Edited 2/7/14

I've decided to bump this up to 3 stars. Given the number of times I've referenced it, thought about it, and tied it into other things, I have to say that it was better than my initial 2 star impression.

I liked this book a lot less than I expected to. It's won a lot of prizes and got some great reviews, and touches on a lot of subjects I generally enjoy, but in the end I was disappointed. The setting is interesting - sort of post-environmental collapse future, where genetic engineering has clearly caused terrible plagues as well as being a potential savior. Some reviews described it as cyberpunk, but it isn't really; futuristic and high tech yes, but I don't get all the comparisons to William Gibson.

Anyway, without too many spoilers, the plot loosely revolves around a genetically modified woman called Emiko who is considered sub-human and soulless because she was created rather than being "natural". She isn't the clear central character but most of the other characters and the plot are ultimately somehow affected by her actions in one way or another. She could have been a much more interesting character than she actually is and could have told a much more compelling story about the fight between engineering and training vs free will and determination, but instead she seemed to be used simply to forward the plot and for cheap effect and I was kind of left feeling that the author had just used her and treated her as badly as most of the characters in the book do.

Most of the book is actually about the convoluted schemes and political machinations of various groups of mostly unsympathetic characters, many of whom just seem to die or disappear without explanation by the end with no real satisfactory conclusion. There are too many plot threads that just taper off and never come to anything, and the ending of the book itself just kind of drifts away. I enjoyed the novel's setting, in terms of the futuristic plague-scarred world, but I was left unimpressed and unsatisfied by the characters and plot overall.