I had not heard of this book before when @macdonst pushed it my way,
saying good things about it. It turns out he was right (we like the
same sort of scifi stories) and The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacilagupi, really
was a great read.

The Windup Girl is a refreshing science-fiction story taking place a
hundred years or so into the future. No alliens, no spaceships, no
super-computers and virtual reality. Actually, no more oil either.
It’s been all used up, and the sea level is up so much that the city
of Bangkok (where the story takes place) had to build walls around
itself and pump systems to keep on existing.

In this future where genetic engineering went crazy, super-plants
designed by American corporations have to fight against super-diseases
and super-insects designed to undermine them by competitor
corporations. Human beings and Nature stand in the cross-fire and
struggle to survive as food-stocks get depleted, diseases evolve and
attack human beings, etc.

In this dark and frightful future, we follow half a dozen of
protagonists, each with their own (sometime conflicting) goals, as the country is reshaping to adapt to new diseases and economic challenges. An American
businessman hired by a bio-engineering firm tries to locate a
particularly brillant genetic engineer. An old Chinese trader want to
re-establish the trading empire he once had. An illegal Japanese « New
Person » (bio-engineered human being) wants to escape the city where
she is forced to be a prostitute to survive. An ex-muai thai champion,
now captain of the « white shirts » (genetic police & disease control)
finds that his zealousness and over-confidence did not only win him
friends.

If you’re tired of virtual reality and space opera, this book is what
you were waiting for! It’s a breath of fresh air. It’s particularly
well written; the story flows nicely and the words are never in the
way. That’s the way I like stories: prose so well written that it
becomes invisible to the reader. The action/page ratio is perfect (in
my opinion) and the story lines wrap up nicely in the end. The book
does not feel too short or stretched. Being a début novel, The Windup
Girl puts the bar high for Paolo Bacilagupi’s next book (which I will order
the minute it gets released.) To borrow @macdonst‘s classification
system, this book is definitively a « buy ».

Filed under:
Lectures by Alexandre Lemieux