The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

[avrelia]

I have just finished the Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi having spent many painful hours on this book. It is a very good book – it won Nebula award and is nominated for Hugo, both justly deserved. It is also a very difficult book to read and love.
One of the reasons is that I need characters to care about, and here... it is not that there were none of those, but none to carry the weight of a protagonist. The story followed fates of several: a businessman, an old Chinese refugee, a titular windup girl, and two corrupt Thai officials. It was not a character story, after all, it was a... situation story, I would say. Not unlike mystery novels in a way. Only the question was not who murdered X, but what the hell happened?
Another reason why it was hard to love and painful to read book, because it is misery porn. Not because of actual porn involved (though there pages and pages of sexual abuse description), but because this is the world where things cannot get better, they only can get worse, and after a while I started to wish it all blew up already. And the book delivered.
Now, for spoilers.
The place is the Thai kingdom in a scary post-apocalyptic world, less than two hundred years from now. Thai kingdom is the only independent state in the world where big companies rule. The true rulers of the world are large companies who supply the world with genetically engineered food. And the other food doesn't exist any more. Well, almost.
Ecological apocalypse at its scariest. The picture of our world is horrifying, because its is somewhat believable. More believable than a zombie apocalypse. Nature is all but extinguished by genetically engineered plants, animals and most of all – plagues. People are dying in troves from diseases unknown to us, most of them made by “calorie companies” to control the world. It is a bleak, miserable world.
The book starts with a new shiny fruit on a market stall. New yet not engineered. Anderson, “a calorie man”, representative of THE BIG COMPANY undercover finds it and tries to learn where it comes from. Kingdom of Thai has closed its borders for those rulers of the world. Thais don't believe in free market.
Anderson pretends he runs a factory that makes kink-springs – a staple of modern economy.
Then we follow the problems of Hock Seng, his right hand on the factory, who hates Anderson and constantly scheming how to return to his fortunes. His life sucks badly, but at least he is alive, while all his family got killed in Malaya.
I struggle through the book waiting for interesting stuff to start happening. The only thing that keeps me reading is that I am trying to find out what exactly happened here and how. Following the modern standard of writing, the author doesn't do infodumps and, as to not insult my intelligence feeds me the information in tiny pieces. I eventually start screaming silently, “Do insult my intelligence already! Just tell it, I am tired of picking up clues and doing that puzzle!” No, of course, after finishing the book, I can say that I know what happened on Earth. Just not why like that, not how. Oh, well. Why everything we know now stopped working except generipping and biotechnology?
Then we finally get to see the titular character – Emiko, the windup girl. She wasn't born, she is genetically engineered in Japan to be a perfect companion. Except that she is not in Japan, she is in Thailand where she is illegal and she suffers a lot. Pages and pages of graphic suffering, starting with sexual abuse. I pity her, but starting with horrible abuse doesn't help to interest me in her fate.
Then we see two Thai officials, who work at Environmental Ministry. They are corrupt and well-hated and not exceedingly nice people. Jaydee (male) and Kanya (female). I ended up rooting for them the most, because at least it is their country and they try to keep it alive. Even when they do wrong things.
Then there is a new disease, government coup, more misery and suffering and death for everyone. But those are actually good and fun things, comparing to the rest of the book.
I am glad I have finished this book. It was a worth-while endeavor, but my progress was so torturous, I am pretty sure I am not going to read it ever again.