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Book Review: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Summary:
In this steampunk vision of a possible dystopian future, carbon usage and genetic engineering caused the world to nearly collapse. Whole nations have been lost to starvation due to exorbitant prices charged by the genetic engineering calorie companies and also due to the rising seas from global warming caused by carbon usage. Domestic cats have been wiped out by cheshires–genetically engineered cats that can appear and disappear, just like the cat in Alice in Wonderland. Thailand, through strict military enforcement of calorie and carbon consumption, has managed to hold back both the sea with a sea wall and starvation. The Thai work diligently to rid their nation of windups–genetically engineered living creatures. As Buddhists, they believe these windups have no souls. Within this world we see glimpses of five very different lives. There’s Anderson, a foreigner from Detroit who claims to be running a factory but is actually a calorie company spy. His manager, Hock Seng, is a survivor of the Malaysian civil war where Muslim fundamentalists attempted to kill all the Chinese immigrants. Jaidee and Kanya work for the Environment Ministry, also known as white shirts. They are the military enforcers of all the environmental laws, but they are struggling against the Trade Ministry that wants to open their borders back up to foreign trade. Finally, there’s Emiko. She is a Japanese windup girl. The Japanese created windups due to a severe lack of young people to care for the old. She came over both as a secretary and lover of her owner who had to do business in Thailand, but he then decided it would be cheaper to leave her behind than to take her on the return trip. She now is a spectacle in sex shows in the ghetto of Krung Thep. These lives slowly intertwine, and through them, Bacigalupi shows how easily civil war can erupt.
Review:
I fully admit that this book was out of my comfort zone. I don’t normally read books on political intrigue and intertwining lives. I tend to stick to ones that talk about one individual person, and that’s what I was expecting from a book called The Windup Girl. That’s why I took the time to write a detailed summary, so you all would have a clearer picture of what this book is about than I did. This is another one of those books that I almost gave up on early in. Bacigalupi doesn’t take the time to truly set up the world. Things have names and are briefly or not at all described, so you have to fill in the gaps yourself. I think if I hadn’t read steampunk before, I would have been at a loss. For instance, he never explains exactly what a dirigible is, although we know they are sky ships. It is not until the end of the book when one gets blown up and a character refers to it as a creature that it becomes apparent that they are living creatures used as sky ships. This is just one example of many ways in which the world building is sloppy. It takes until solidly halfway through the book for a clear picture of Krung Thep to emerge. Additionally, this is one of those books that tosses around non-English words where English ones would entirely suffice. For example, all of the foreigners are called farang, not foreigners. It makes sense to use a Thai word where there is no English equivalent, but it’s just superfluous to toss them around when there is one. Technically these characters are supposedly speaking entirely in Thai. We know that. Bacigalupi doesn’t need to throw Thai words in periodically just to remind us. Still, though, I kept reading beyond the first couple of chapters, mainly because I bought the book on my Kindle app, and I don’t tend to waste money. In the end, I’m glad I kept reading.
Although the setting and world building is rough, the story itself is quite interesting. Many perspectives are offered on these issues that potentially could become issues in real life. What are the rights and roles of genetically engineered living beings? Is nature the way it’s always been better or genetic engineering the next step in evolution? One of the pro-genetic engineering characters states:
We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it. (Location 6347-6350)
It is an interesting question. Will our next phase of evolution happen in the traditional manner, or is the next phase actually us using our brains to improve?
The Buddhist concepts sprinkled throughout the text are also quite enjoyable. The characters struggle to maintain their belief in karma and reincarnation in spite of the issues of windups. It clearly depicts how religion must struggle to adapt to change. Additionally, the concepts of fate and karma and how much one can actually do to improve one’s lot in life are explored in an excellent manner through multiple characters. It reminded me a lot of how the Dark Tower series explores the similar idea of ka (fate). One sentence that really struck me on this theme was:
He wonders if his karma is so broken that he cannot every truly hope to succeed. (Location 8388-8393)
I was just discussing a similar concept with a friend the other day, so it really struck me to see it in print.
Additionally, the ending truly surprised me, even though it’s evident throughout most of the book that a civil war is coming. I always enjoy it when a book manages to surprise me, and this one definitely did.
Overall, although Bacigalupi struggles with world building, his intertwined characters and themes are thought-provoking to read. I’m glad I went out of my comfort zone to read this book, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the themes of fate, evolution, nature, karma, or political intrigue.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
My Tentative Journey With eBooks
A while back, I told you guys that I’m continuing my tentative steps into eBooks, but it hadn’t been very successful yet. I admit this is partly because I’m a broke-ass graduate student, and so I don’t exactly have the cash to shell out for what I see as an extravagance. Why get an eReader when I can get used books for under $5 a pop? (For why I don’t have time to use the local library, see this post). I’ve tried downloading eBooks that are available as pdf’s onto my computer, but I always made it only about as far through as a blog’s archives before losing focus. Or I’d have to leave it and come back the next day and be incapable of finding where I left off. I just can’t read a book on a computer. Nuh-uh. A computer is for article-length pieces. I just can’t get past the part where I’m looking at a computer to get lost in the story.
When I got my iTouch, I decided to venture in yet again. But I repeat that I’m a cheapskate, so I downloaded a couple of the various apps available for 99 cents that provide huge selections of out of copyright classics to read. Although I was able to focus on the screen, it reminded me a lot of my speed-reading classes in middle school, because the screen automatically fades at a certain point (I’m not sure how long), so I’d either have to keep tapping the screen to keep it from doing that or read insanely fast. The speed might not have been an issue if I wasn’t attempting to read classics, but I always read classics kind of slowly. I get wrapped up in the language and the world-building. Classics are about slow reading versus the fast reading of genre fiction for me. I got about 3 chapters into two different classics before giving up and stopping.
Well then people started talking about the iBook app, and since I love everything Mac, I decided to download it, but upon trying I found out that my iTouch is too old to support it, at which point I started browsing the eReader section of the app store and saw the Kindle app. For some reason, it had previously escaped my attention that the Kindle even had an app for Mac products. I vaguely remembered some book blogs mentioning that you can get some books for free in the Kindle store, and the app was free, and….do I really need to repeat what a cheapskate I am? Lol.
So I figured where am I most likely to read on my iTouch? That’s easy. On the bus when I can’t sit, need to hold on with one hand, and getting a book out of my bag is difficult. What would I like to read on the bus but am embarrassed to? Romance novels. So I found a free romance novel and downloaded it. The nice thing about the Kindle app, the main thing that made me start to relax into reading with it, is that the backlighting never fades. I’m not so caught up in beating the fading light that I’m incapable of getting lost in the story. So that was going fairly well, although I was still choosing to read my print book over the eBook whenever it was possible.
Then a certain book was released. A book in a trilogy that is honestly a guilty pleasure for me. (I’ll leave the reasonings for that for when I review the book next week). I had decided I wasn’t going to buy the book; I’d just read spoilers and be happy with that. But then the day of the release, I was getting frustrated at the complete lack of spoilers on the internet and while watching tv browsed to the Amazon store on my iTouch, and before I knew it, I’d bought the book. I didn’t feel bad about the price, because it was less than the price of a movie ticket, and I view guilty pleasure reads a lot like going to the movies. It’s brief entertainment, and I don’t need to hold onto it. Let it entertain me for a bit, and in most cases, I won’t ever come back to it (my dvd collection is very, very small).
I was still skeptical about my desire to read on the small electronic screen of my iTouch, but I figured worst case scenario I’d skim for the spoilers and read it in print when the hoopla settles down. I started reading it when standing on the bus in the morning, got a seat, and found myself wanting to keep reading on my iTouch over my print book. And then on lunch break I decided I’d rather see what happened in that story than in the one I’m reading in print and discovered how much easier it is to eat and read when you can just set the book down and the pages don’t close on you. Whoa. Then I found myself sitting on my couch reading the iTouch. Then last night in bed I suddenly realized I could turn out all the lights and still see to read because my book was lighting itself up. Whoa.
You guys….I have to admit….I like it. Now that’s not to say I don’t have my issues with it. For instance, nice as it is to read in the dark, sunny locations fade the screen so much that it’s sometimes nearly impossible to read. I also don’t like the thought of the battery maybe running out. (I may have obsessively recharged my iTouch yesterday. *looks askance*) I also don’t like how very small the iTouch screen is. I also would never ever want an electronic device just for reading. Part of the convenience on transit is having my music, videogames, and book all in one item. Having something like a Kindle or a Nook seems rather pointless to me. It’s one more device to carry. So what has a larger screen but does all that? The iPad. I think the iPad still has issues. Like I personally think it’s too big and too thick, (that’s what she said) but I think the next generation is going to solve those problems. So…yeah, I see myself doing some electronic reading in the future. But never on a device meant just for reading. I also only see the value in it for guilty pleasure reads. It works for me because of the way I read guilty pleasures. I read quickly, sometimes skimming, because the story is all about the excitement or the hilarity. It’s not about the deep thought. I can’t see me reading a book that changes my life on an electronic device. That just rings false to me. But reading a story that’s about consuming it once kind of like buying movie popcorn for the pure pleasure of chowing down the greasy, salty deliciousness? That makes sense to me. So that’s the role I see eBooks taking in my life. The reading equivalent of movie popcorn, and who doesn’t like movie popcorn every once in a while?
Friday Fun! (Gardening, Kindle App, Swiffer)
Hello my lovely readers! Thanks to my friend Nina, my tomato plant now actually has a cage instead of being held up by a contraption made up of random bits of my blinds, yarn, and my refrigerator. It is surviving…barely. It’s this tall gangly thing. On the other hand, my peppers keep getting bushier but not blossoming. Get on that, peppers! The basil is behaving quite well. I highly recommend it to anyone who forgets to water plants until they get wrinkly and then desperately drowns them with so much water that the dirt floats. That might just be me. In any case, the basil is thriving in spite of my abuse.
Oh in bookish news, I got the Kindle app for my iTouch, partly because it’s free, but also because I was wondering if I’d actually successfully finish an eBook if it wasn’t a classic. So far all the ones I’ve tried have been classics because that’s what’s free. Anyway, I heard that you can get some romance novels for free from Amazon via the Kindle app, and lo and behold you can! So expect a review of reading on the Kindle app, and possibly the book, if I actually finish it. I have yet to successfully finish an eBook, and I only plan on reading this when I’m standing up on the bus with one free hand or in line for something. So we shall see what we see.
Also, pet owners, for the love of sanity get a Swiffer
Happy weekends all!
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 