Hock Seng (The Windup Girl)

The character of Hock Seng stands out to me from the plethora of great characters in The Windup Girl for sheer resiliency and street smarts.  His story, more so than those of the others, weaves in and out of the upper parts of Thai society and the lower giving a perfect view of the detailed world that Bacigalupi has created.  He encapsulates the post-apocalyptic character, someone who has felt the effects of the collapse of society personally (the loss of his family and private empire) and adapted coming out the other side stronger, more capable, and necessarily ruthless.

No other character besides perhaps Emiko has as much going against them as Hock Seng who seems to face the potential for death around every corner.  He is a member of one of the lowest and most despised classes in society, his embezzling has him constantly in the cross-hairs of his boss, he's made a deal with the devil (actually organized crime), he even has to pretend to be something he's not just to survive in his own neighborhood. 

The result is that he's constantly on edge, constantly working things out in his head, planning his next move, looking around the room for the best exits.  Ordinarily, you would expect someone is his position to breakdown or make that final fatal mistake. Instead, his troubles hone his natural smarts and intuition to an almost predatory level.  Its a perfect example of Darwinian adaptability.  Like Mad Max or Robert Neville, he transforms to fit the post-apocalyptic landscape.  On the outside he is an unassuming character: small, aging, somewhat meek.  Yet he survives where other characters who are seemingly stronger and more capable (like Jaidee) fall under the complexities and demands of their strange and deadly society.

Every character in The Windup Girl has a compelling story.  Kanya is playing a difficult political game while dealing with her own past and trying to fill the large shoes of her disgraced Captain.  Anderson Lake is practically juggling chainsaws from page one while lying to everyone he meets.  Emiko's life is a living hell.  But I find Hock Seng's to be the most compelling thread, one that weaves through many of the others and connects all the various themes and tones of the novel.  There's always a hint of ruin around the bend, but you're also constantly wandering just how he'll get out of this scrape and on to the next one.

Impressions of The Windup Girl

The setting and atmosphere of The Windup Girl reminds me of Casablanca.  The city seems to be that same melting pot of individuals, that same combination of conspiracies and tensions that feels eternally on the verge of exploding into utter chaos. Every character seems to be wearing a mask and never really reveals their true objectives.  The location is described just enough and at the same time taken for granted enough that we aren't forcibly draw to any one detail but allowed to let it all wash over us.  Everything comes to life around us.

The setting doesn't really fit within the confines of a dystopia.  Sure, there is some obvious corruption and hints of tyranny in the government, but that isn't really too different from some nations today or in our past.  If anything, the world has regressed to a kind of 17th century blend of colonialism and monarchy only with modern corporate politics and power struggles. 

There has obviously been an ecological apocalypse and the loss of major energy sources has had some devastating effects on society, but human ingenuity under pressure has led to some interesting technological developments.  By genetically engineering stronger and larger beasts of burden in the form of these megodonts and perfecting high energy capacity spring technology to store kinetic energy, people have been able to come up with new ways of powering their world; and much more attention has been given to efficiency with regard to our energy usage. 

Sure things are difficult and a bit chaotic, but I think that this would be a challenging and exciting world to live in.  I don't feel like things are on the brink of collapse as they are in some of the other stories we have been reading, just in the process of starting to rebuild and figure itself out.  It would be a fascinating environment to live in.

The Windup Girl: Worth the First Frustrations

So, I'm going to be part of the group reading the Windup Girl. I actually read the book a while back, so this will be my second time through it. There's been a lot of talk about how difficult this book is to read, and I just wanted to say a few things about this: the early frustrations experienced at the beginning of this book (and they do fade after the first few chapters) are not as bad as some reviews you might read make them seem, and the whole story is definitely worth sticking around for.

The author creates one of the most detailed, believable, and lived-in worlds that I have ever read in science fiction. But he doesn't spend any time setting up the world or explaining the history/politics/sciences/terminology, you are just immediately thrown into the thick of things.  This can be a bit disorienting, but it also keeps you from getting pulled out of the story by outside-the-narrative explanations interjected for clarity, which is a problem in sci-fi that can ruin the flow or result in some very contrived scenes where characters stop to describe some piece of technology or idea that most people in that world are so familiar with that they would never think twice about it.  This kind of exposition can drive me nuts (I'm looking at you Robert Heinlein (read For Us the Living if you don't believe me, these explanations are the whole gosh darn book!)), but it does make the audience's job easier. You won't find any of that here.

And it wouldn't really work anyway with this setting. The richness and believability adds so much to the story, and it would suffer if overburdened by all of theses expository intrusions. And I think that Bacigalupi goes a good job at this. When done correctly (see anything by C.J. Cherryh) it allows the book to immediately pull you in.  So please don't be discouraged.  It will fade after the first few chapters. The story you will experience is worth the price of admission.