The Windup Girl
by Paolo Bacigalupi
science fiction, dystopia
copyright 2009
read (partly) in August 2015
rated 5/10: readable, but only if there's nothing else
It's a "good" book -- well written, well plotted, good characterisations -- and too miserable to read. I lasted less than half way. Perhaps I've passed my limit of dystopian novels...
Ship Breaker starts nasty but the hero soon shows signs of improving his lot in life. Gleam is nasty all the way through but the characters are cartoonish, so I'm not upset as they kill and betray each other.
Windup is written well enough that I get involved with the characters. So, as they scrabble through their miserable existences, it's depressing.
The Windup Girl herself is a slave, subject to death at any moment. She hopes to escape slavery, to become a starving peasant in the disease-ridden jungle. Whoopee.
Another somewhat sympathetic character has just had his life, his career, his family destroyed. Whoopee. One man is willing to help the Windup Girl, he is driven by lust. Otherwise, he's an evil bastard, willing to destroy people and countries in order to make more money.
The rest of the characters are even worse.
Okay, according to the blurb this is "a razor-sharp vision of our near future." And yes, I can see a simple extrapolation from current business practices. Is this book a morality tale, a lesson for our times ?
Hit me again ! Harder ! Put the boot in ! Harder ! I've almost learnt the lesson !
But I certainly don't enjoy it.
Jules Renard (as quoted in GMail) - "Laziness is not
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