Reviews with content warning for Xenophobia - The Windup Girl

Reviews tagging 'Xenophobia'

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

10 reviews

spentcello's review against another edition

dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

There's a lot to like. I like the climate/biological twist on cyberpunk, and while the Gibson and PKD influence was very obvious, the setting and overall concept was clever enough that it comes out enhanced rather than derivative.

The Windup Girl is very dark in a humourless, damp kind of way - you feel the bleakness of the future Bacigalupi is portraying with an omnipresent focus on climate. I like the concept of this but it also made it hard to get stuck into the book. Like eating without being able to taste anything - important of course, but not particularly enjoyable. It warmed up as I went through, but then it ran into the problem of being too sprawling and having extraneous narrative strands just to introduce karmic balance much later in the story.

I can see why I should like it (and I did to some extent), but it just didn't quite do it for me.

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hazeclarke's review against another edition

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reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

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coreykohn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Speculative fiction at its best and most thought provoking. It’s deeply entertaining and appropriately disturbing.

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gnomeniche's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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mykingdomforacommune's review against another edition

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dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

When oil runs out, how will America exploit the world? This is the core question at the heart of the world building in The Windup Girl.

But it also aims to show how we, as animals, fall very quickly to predation and moral apathy in the face of cataclism.

Are the characters loveable? Absolutely not and neither, if we are honest, are most of us if our very existence were threatened. However, the characters in this novel also resort to a lot of racial stereotypes and general hostility. Muslim groups massacring non Muslims, smug conniving Chinese, and the corrupt Thai are all very present.

This is also yet another book that uses rape to create sympathy for the fem lead. The scenes are graphic so advance with caution.

The speculative elements in the book range from cool to the utterly ridiculous. The scientifically impossible apparently easy, even in destroyed shells of a city, and things that are possible now are treated as impossible.

In short, read with caution, flip through any scenes as soon as they get rapey, and suspend your disbelief and it's an enjoyable science fantasy.

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