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the complete review - fiction

The Windup Girl

by
Paolo Bacigalupi

general information | review summaries | review and reception notes | links | about the author

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Why we haven't reviewed it yet:
Sounded intriguing, gave it 85 pages, wasn't getting anywhere


Chances that we will review it:
Very slim

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  From the Reviews:

• "(A) very accomplished piece of writing, all the more impressive given that it's Bacigalupi's first novel. Its strongest feature is the worldbuilding -- the intricately believable portrait of a future Thailand fighting back from environmental collapse. (...) At 544 pages, it's probably 100-or-so pages too long, and a much-anticipated encounter with a genetic wizard called Gibbons reads slightly anticlimactically at the end. But when it hits its sweet-spot, The Windup Girl embodies what SF does best of all: it remakes reality in compelling, absorbing and thought-provoking ways, and it lives on vividly in the mind." - Adam Roberts, The Guardian
  
  
• "This complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best, will garner Bacigalupi significant critical attention and is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year." - Publishers Weekly
  
  
• "Bacigalupi is a worthy successor to William Gibson: this is cyberpunk without computers." - Lev Grossman, Time

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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Notes about the Reviews
and the Book's Reception:

       Time considered it one of the top ten works of fiction of 2009, and it has gotten considerable acclaim.
       The ideas are certainly intriguing and I always enjoy a good dystopia, but I found it painfully plodding and gave up after eighty pages when not much of the story had come together yet (as, presumably, it eventually does).

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Links:

• Night Shade

• Asking the Wrong Questions
• BookPage
• Grasping for the Wind
• The Guardian
• New Orleans Review
• Nancy's Blog
• booki's Obloquy
• Orion
• Publishers Weekly
• sffworld.com
• SF Signal
• Strange Horizons
• Vaguely Borgesian
• Whatever

• windupstories.com - fiction by paolo bacigalupi

• See Index of Science Fiction and Fantasy books
• See Index of Contemporary American fiction

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About the Author:

       Paolo Bacigalupi is an American author.

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