The Windup Girl

By: Paolo Bacigalupi

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

Earphones Award Winner (AudioFile Magazine)

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories.

There, he encounters Emiko...Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; instead, she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.

What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of The Calorie Man (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and Yellow Card Man (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions.

BONUS AUDIO: In an exclusive introduction, author Paolo Bacigalupi explains how a horrible trip to Thailand led to the idea for The Windup Girl.

©2009 Paolo Bacigalupi (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

• Hugo Award, Best Novel, 2010
• Nebula Award, Best Novel, 2009
• Best Books of 2009, Publishers Weekly
• 10 Best Fiction Books of 2009, Time magazine
• Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy 2009, Library Journal

"Paolo Bacigalupi's debut sci-fi novel is a stunner, especially as interpreted under the careful ministrations of narrator Jonathan Davis. The novel postulates a corrupt near-future society in Southeast Asia, where powerful corporations vie for control over rice yields by wielding bioengineered viruses as tools for profit." ( AudioFile)

" The Windup Girl will almost certainly be the most important SF novel of the year for its willingness to confront the most cherished notions of the genre, namely that our future is bright and we will overcome our selfish, cruel nature." ( Book Page)

"A classic dystopian novel likely to be short listed for the Nebula and Hugo Awards" ( SF Signal)

Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

A good book with interesting worldbuilding and complicated characters. The narrator does a great job, especially considering the number of important characters. Don't read if you can't handle graphic depictions of s*xual assault, violence, genocide, and war. Everything is described in detail, even things that are probably best left undescribed. Use extreme discretion

Great

I loved the story, just wish I could figure out which character’s point of view it was before I started the chapter. It would’ve benefited from a GRRM writing approach GREATLY. Still trying to figure out how many people were the same character from the other’s point of view since names weren’t always given

I really wanted to like this book...

I really wanted to like this book, and I didn't at first, but the last couple of chapters drew me in. While there is something to be said for the author respecting the intelligence of the reader, there needed to be more background and more explanation. It was also a pretty dark book only looking at the dark side of humanity. That said, it did provoke me to some deeper thought and have some insight to humanity, but overall I'm not sure if it was worth the long listen...

should have been a good read but wasn't

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

I simply could not get into it, could not buy the premise. It never became real enough for me to care. I probably listened to a third of it.

Falls short of expectations

What made the experience of listening to The Windup Girl the most enjoyable?

The premise and setting of the story are so novel and wonderful, but unfortunately I feel like the author missed a great opportunity. It was great to imagine this possibility in the future, and to even think that it may be true. As a molecular biologist, some of the things seemed a little far fetched but for the most part...who knows, this could maybe even happen if we aren't careful. Yikes, that would be awful.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I suppose the wind-up girl. Although I would have liked to see me scenes with Dr. Gibson (sp?), and hear more about the gene ripping and the imaginitive things he could make. I wish, in fact, that it had been centered around a gene-ripper instead of the factory etc.

What three words best describe Jonathan Davis’s voice?

Does not match

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Nah, sadly no. I think the book was full of great beginnings but didn't quite move anywhere. I understand the idea of leaving a book with no endings, but this had an ending and yet no ending at the same time. I just wasn't that impressed.

Any additional comments?

Maybe if a different actor had been implemented I may have enjoyed it better, but I just couldn't get all that into it. I kept listening thinking something exciting might happen etc etc but I found myself getting bored pretty easily. Again, this author I think missed the mark.

Slow buildup but story is good

It took some time to get in the feel of the book. When the main character meets the windup it got better.

I liked the book. I liked the windup, but wished there was more about her. I liked the Main character, but disliked his indifference to the windup in the end. And I loved the twist ending! ;)

very thought provoking on occasion

A little slow, but has many thought provoking ideas that aren't far fetched at all.

More of a Wind-ing Plot

Often when I have trouble fully understanding a novel, or when I have been distracted while listening to certain parts of it, I listen to it again. I will probably do that with this novel eventually. However, I felt that the structure of the novel included a great deal of information-driven plotline which was just too much. You can only listen to/read about corporate heads talking in offices before it just drags.

There seemed to be three viewpoints telling the story: Asian businessmen, an American businessman and the Windup Girl. The latter character is the most interesting part of the story, but she is brought in too late and described in sketchy, fragments of text. After a while I became very confused as to what had and what had not yet happened.

This is a shame. Because I can see a fabulous novel inside all of this extra "wrapping." The book is called The Windup Girl - therefore imo she should be the main part of the story - not thrown in willy-nilly as if her story is a side-plot.

If you are patient and do not mind searching for a few needles in a haystack, give it a try. I'm going to give it a second chance one of these days.

interesting concept but hard to follow + too long

Very interesting in terms of the overall idea but holy cow it is way, way too long and drawn out. The writing and narration are solid but I was left feeling disconnected from most of the characters which I found to be disappointing. I do like the author overall and would try another novel from him.

Good book, terrific performance

This is like a Graham Greene novel, set in a future world in which bioengineering and energy shortages have altered everyday life a lot. The Kingdom of Thailand is a self-isolated nation whose independence from the "calorie companies" that supply the world's food (engineered so that customers can't grow it themselves and are stuck paying the calorie companies through the nose) is made possible by rigorous environmental regulations and prohibitions against imports like the title character.

There's scheming, double-crosses, conspiracies, corruption, spying and everyone is motivated by a desperate self-interest. Because there are so many characters, many of whom don't come together until the end, it takes this book a while to build up momentum. Once it does, though, it's quite exciting, and even when you're not sure where it's going, the narrator's superb performance, subtly modifying his tone of voice with each character's point of view, and adding lots of small touches (he'll narrated the description of someone going through a bag looking for something exactly as the person himself would speak while doing it, for example), make it all very vivid.