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julianmeynell

Julian Meynell's Books

I like Books.

The Windup Girl - Paolo Bacigalupi

This is an excellent work of science fiction. Set in a future ravaged my plagues that have attacked the food supply to make room for corporations, the book is set in Thailand. It is really a first class work written in shades of black and grey. The characters are fascinating, and they vary from flawed to sociopathic. The future is plausible and the issues that are explored are real ones.

The prose styling could be a little bit better, but it is certainly far above the normal for science fiction. The idea exploration could have been pushed a little further, and I would not have minded seeing those ideas pushed a bit. But overall, the world is convincing and real. It is an original dystopia, not something we see much off. The best part of the book is the characters. The characters are real people, and are very carefully drawn. In science fiction the weakness is usually the characters, but that weakness does not apply here.

Very impressive.