Anderson Lake is AgriGen’s Calorie Man, sent to work undercover as a factory manager in Thailand while combing Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calories.
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, 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 this 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 and forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly-acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century.
Written by Paolo Bacigalupi
A great premise absolutely ruined by the author’s inability to stay with a single narrative thread for more than a chapter or two. Should we be interested in the calorie man? the windup girl? How about the leader of the White Shirts, or the fight they’re having with the Ministry, or the unseen Queen that’s out there, or the guy they have locked up that’s diseased from some self made plague? Or perhaps the Yellow Card guys or the character named “dog fucker”?
I really had my expectations dashed by this book. It’s got a great hook, but Bacigalupi can’t decide which direction to go with it, and ultimately it goes no where.
