The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

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.( Read more... )