Spanish language
Published May 24, 2011 by Plaza Janés.
Anderson Lake es el hombre de confianza de AgriGen en Tailandia, un reino cerrado a los extranjeros para proteger sus preciadas reservas ecológicas. Su empleo como director de una fábrica es en realidad una tapadera. Anderson peina los puestos callejeros de Bangkok en busca del botín más preciado para sus amos: los alimentos que la humanidad creía extinguidos. Entonces encuentra a Emiko... Emiko es una «chica mecánica», el último eslabón de la ingeniería genética. Como los demás neoseres a cuya raza pertenece, fue diseñada para servir. Acusados por unos de carecer de alma, por otros de ser demonios encarnados, los neoseres son esclavos, soldados o, en el caso de Emiko, juguetes sexuales para satisfacer a los poderosos en un futuro inquietantemente cercano... ... donde las personas nuevamente han de recordar qué las hace humanas.
Paolo Bacigalupi nos lleva al siglo XXII, un mundo donde el cambio climático ya se …
Anderson Lake es el hombre de confianza de AgriGen en Tailandia, un reino cerrado a los extranjeros para proteger sus preciadas reservas ecológicas. Su empleo como director de una fábrica es en realidad una tapadera. Anderson peina los puestos callejeros de Bangkok en busca del botín más preciado para sus amos: los alimentos que la humanidad creía extinguidos. Entonces encuentra a Emiko... Emiko es una «chica mecánica», el último eslabón de la ingeniería genética. Como los demás neoseres a cuya raza pertenece, fue diseñada para servir. Acusados por unos de carecer de alma, por otros de ser demonios encarnados, los neoseres son esclavos, soldados o, en el caso de Emiko, juguetes sexuales para satisfacer a los poderosos en un futuro inquietantemente cercano... ... donde las personas nuevamente han de recordar qué las hace humanas.
Paolo Bacigalupi nos lleva al siglo XXII, un mundo donde el cambio climático ya se produjo, casi se han agotado el petróleo, el gas y el carbón, la tracción animal ha reemplazado los motores de combustión, la ingeniería genética se aplica en cultivos, animales e incluso humanos, y las multinacionales biotecnológicas controlan la principal fuente de alimentos: las semillas transgénicas.
I realized after reading this book that it's the third in a series. Whoops. However, I made it through and enjoyed it well enough, nonetheless.
I realized after reading this book that it's the third in a series. Whoops. However, I made it through and enjoyed it well enough, nonetheless.
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 …
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.
This book contains tremendous story telling inexplicably punctuated with unnecessary illicit violent sexual conduct. It disappoints the same way a good comedian disappoints when he stops being funny and resorts to obscenity. What a shame...
This book contains tremendous story telling inexplicably punctuated with unnecessary illicit violent sexual conduct. It disappoints the same way a good comedian disappoints when he stops being funny and resorts to obscenity. What a shame...
Wonderful future world, but too many questions about the Contraction go unaddressed. Maybe there will be more stories to come.
This story is a wonderful one, with characters that surprise without betraying their nature. The prose could be richer; other writers might have brought more visceral imagery, but the story is strong enough for me to forgive the telling.
Wonderful future world, but too many questions about the Contraction go unaddressed. Maybe there will be more stories to come.
This story is a wonderful one, with characters that surprise without betraying their nature. The prose could be richer; other writers might have brought more visceral imagery, but the story is strong enough for me to forgive the telling.
Good read! A little slow off the mark, but strong once it gains its stride.
A great near future thriller set in a world ravaged by disease and blights of food crops. The book weaves the stories of four or five characters together around a coup and along the way there are explorations of trust, betrayal, the meaning of the soul and eco-collapses.returnreturnThe grime of the future, the global city and the interweaving characters is like Gibson, the sense of a viable post-apocalypse invokes Ballard. However the characters are drawn with much real humanity than either and consistently engage.
The idea of this book caught me right away.
A post fossil fuel future without mad max.
In the Windup Girl, the apocalypse has come an gone, and while life is hard and the possibility of human extinction is very much a question, civilization hasn't crumbled.
This isn't a story about the last remnants of the human race fighting for survival in the wilderness. It's a story about technological civilization as it tries to find a new balance in a world with no easy energy sources and some pretty serious environmental hazards caused by man's folly.
The idea of this book caught me right away.
A post fossil fuel future without mad max.
In the Windup Girl, the apocalypse has come an gone, and while life is hard and the possibility of human extinction is very much a question, civilization hasn't crumbled.
This isn't a story about the last remnants of the human race fighting for survival in the wilderness. It's a story about technological civilization as it tries to find a new balance in a world with no easy energy sources and some pretty serious environmental hazards caused by man's folly.
I was unsure about the first 100 pages - the characters seemed to passive and the prose was too expository for my liking (though there is a lot of world-building that needs to take place, it just felt tedious). But it all pays off in a big way. The politics gets increasingly tense and there are a lot of wonderful twists and developments that make perfect sense in hindsight. Bacigalupi has created an incredible world that is BEGGING to be a series of books! (all I can say is, after those cliffhangers there had better be a sequel!)
Ah, this book... I feel like this was last year's "really important book that you need to read but may not like much". It hit really hard in the almost presciently relevant to our times area, but not so hard in the keeping me excited section. Partly, it was the fact that I had so much trouble engaging with the #1 protagonist... I have a limited amount of patience for asshole protagonists, and he wore it out right at the start. Partly, too, I was really unprepared for some of the really graphic sexual violence that occurs pretty close to the opening of the book. I know it's meant to drive home just how abused and discarded that character is, but it's so abrupt and feels gratuitously detailed. Maybe, thinking back, it was necessary... so just let this review stand as a trigger warning to others who might be sensitive.
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Ah, this book... I feel like this was last year's "really important book that you need to read but may not like much". It hit really hard in the almost presciently relevant to our times area, but not so hard in the keeping me excited section. Partly, it was the fact that I had so much trouble engaging with the #1 protagonist... I have a limited amount of patience for asshole protagonists, and he wore it out right at the start. Partly, too, I was really unprepared for some of the really graphic sexual violence that occurs pretty close to the opening of the book. I know it's meant to drive home just how abused and discarded that character is, but it's so abrupt and feels gratuitously detailed. Maybe, thinking back, it was necessary... so just let this review stand as a trigger warning to others who might be sensitive.
I definitely felt like I was slogging through. I'm glad I read it, but I wish it hadn't felt so much like a required assignment.
Edit: After further thought and further reading, I'm no longer all that happy I read this. My creeping discomfort at the white male protagonist crashing around in Thailand was really my white privilege shielding me from how damn, horribly bigoted the whole thing was. Japanese geisha robot doll, really? Old Thai factory manager being judged selfish for not always thinking of Mr. white guy first? The portrayal of Thailand as a neverending jungle slum full of people who hate androids?
Again I'm not Thai or Malaysian or Japanese, so I'm sure I'm missing tons, but I now feel justified in saying that I really disliked this novel.
The misogyny in here was awful!
Some of the best fiction I've read in 2009.
Some of the best fiction I've read in 2009.
