The Windup Girl

I think I've decided I don't like the star rating system. I like analyzing things too much, and my feelings on this book run the whole gambit.

I'll start by saying that as far as writer's craft, Paolo Bacigalupi is a five star writer. The way he plays with the language, his powers of description, his attention to minutiae are all skills I to which I aspire. This book surrounds you with post-crisis Thailand from the sweltering heat to the stink of plague. The world envisioned is also terrifyingly probable. I remember doing research back in college on genetically modified foods and the disease mutations produced by them, but I don't think my brain ever made the next logical leap to fear and horror until reading this book.

The complexity of Bacigalupi's plot is intense. There are so many crises facing each and every character, and just when one of them distracts you to the point you forget the others, boom! Also he has the plague! Or white shirts attack. Or a plan goes awry. It's a lot to keep track, and Bacigalupi does it masterfully, instilling suspense and surprise at every chapter. Add to that the normalcy of a world without cats or elephants or pineapples, of government balancing on knife edges, of humanity delving just a little too deep. It's a world just slightly twisted from the one we know, and one where we could end up with just a few mis-steps.

His characters too are complex, believable, and sympathetic. Kanya's life as a double agent, coming to sympathize with the people she still despises, is fascinating to watch, and I love how she ends the story. Jaidee is likable, direct, and therefore doomed, but I loved his muay thai approach to the world, and I don't think I'd like the book at all if his phii didn't come around to snark behind Kanya's back. Hock Seng's unstoppable need to prepare and survive at whatever cost is balanced out by his sympathy for little Mai. He's like a Thenardier with a heart. Emiko, naturally, is the character that held my attention the strongest. I love the way her alien nature comes through the prose, the steady fighting of her nature and training against the reality of a world she for which she was never intended. When Emiko murders the Somdet Chaopraya and his men, I just about cheered. For a title character, though, she gets remarkably little screen time.

I think that Emiko's lack of screen time is really what keeps me from loving this book for all of its craft. The title is “The Windup Girl,” and I went in expecting a story about human hybrids surviving in a post-crisis world. I expected her to go North to the windup encampment. Instead, I got a story about Thai politics and genetically modified fruit. It's an interesting story, but it's not the kind of book that would normally peak my interest. For every heart-breaking or hear-stopping emotional chapter, there's five about political nuances and lychee. It was all necessary, but I found those chapters hard to sit through, especially in the beginning. If you have trouble with slow-starting novels, this one is really not for you.

I'd add to that statement that you should not try this novel if you are not okay with a lot of disturbing, often sexual, violence. I'm not accusing Bacigalupi of being gratuitous because that violence really cements the world and is vital to Emiko's character change, to the very idea that the mistreatment of just one person can topple the world (a theme I very much enjoyed), but it is graphic and again, hard to read.

It's hard for me to sum up my feelings on this book because they are so polarized. On the one hand, I have to respect the craft and skill that went into its creation as well as the entirely topical themes it introduces. On the other... it wasn't the book I was looking for. I didn't get enough time with the characters I wanted to follow, and I had to spend a lot of pages mired in stories I wasn't interested in. 3 stars might be harsh, but using the rating as my strictly personal opinion, that's about where it falls.