In this incredible novel, Paolo Bacigalupi presents the reader with a disturbing yet compelling vision of the future. Energy is so tightly controlled that people get around by bicycles and rickshaws, burn black-market methane, power their computers like old-fashioned sewing machines and their scooters with wound-up springs, and yoke giant, lumbering, genetically engineered pachyderms to spindles in factories. GMOs have run amok, being exploited by their designers for maximum profit. Engineered famines, diseases, and invasive species serve as combatants in a proxy war between competing Monsanto-like calorie companies. And then there's the Windup Girl. She's like a pleasure model replicant, and totally illegal in Bangkok, but abandoned there by a Japanese businessman. A chance encounter with a calorie company man sets things in motion, slowly winding one of Bacigalupi's kink-springs until the climax, when it is allowed to unwind its pent-up Joules.

I really enjoyed this book. Bacigalupi conveys his original vision with excellent prose, well-drawn characters, and generous helpings of Thai flavor. As I am fond of saying, the mark of a great book is instilling in the reader a hunger to learn more. I would love to visit Thailand now, before things get weird.