The reason why I chose this book was that the title caught my attention and set my imagination busy with ideas of what the story could be about. I know that you should never judge a book by it's cover or title, but sometimes you have to takes chances and see if a story appeals to you. The first thing that came to me was that this might be sci-fi book that I can easily follow, just like the fantasy book, meaning not as much scientific detail and complicated words. Long story short, I thought that this book would be as easy to visualize in my mind, like the fantasy books and the other books we have gone through in the class.
I don't know if this the same in the book version, but when I listened to it on the audio version, the author of the book Paolo Bacigalupi telling the listener of how he got the inspiration of the story. Out of all the audio books that I have listen to, I think this is the first one that included the author to tell a little bit of how the story came to them. I like it because it tells me that the author cares for the viewer and his fans and wants to reach out to them and tell them the insight of how the author got the ideas. It's a good connection between author and reader/fan. I think it would be cool if more authors did that, especially if they are popular in the literature field. I can imagine tons of Harry Potter fans going crazy to hear J.K. Rowling at the begining of her Harry Potter audio books, especially the last book and hearing her thank all the fans that keep on reading and love her characters and stories. and how if it wasn't for the fans, Harry Potter might not have gotten as far as it is today (there wouldn't be any theme park or anything if it wasn't for the loyal fans). Listening to Bacigalupi did help me to get some visual of the setting of the story. He got the idea of this story when he went on vacation and he got more than he bargained for. He went to a place that in some parts of the area was in chaos and things were not as it seemed. Also that things like food and water were hard to come by. All these problems were included into his story The Windup Girl.
Sadly though, like the other sci-books I have read so far, this one also was hard to follow at times. Not that it was bad writing or story. It's just that there is too much detail that it's hard to tell it apart from the other crisis in the story. I like the theme of the story being that it's in the 23rd century and organic food like plants aren't around as much as there use to be, and everything is artificial (factory made kind of food). But there is rumored that there is a place that has seeds of real plants, and this guyAnderson Lake is undercover and is trying to things back to normal. There are other character in the story that have important parts as well, but like I mentioned before, It hard to follow along to who is talking about who.
The one character that really got my attention and I had feelings for this character was the windup girl Emiko, a Japanese designed windup girl. The cover of the book doesn't have a picture or illustration of this windup girl, so when the story talked about her, I imagined that she was a girl with a fragile and innocent looking face (the ones that can do no wrong) and you can see some mechanical parts of her on her body. Like you might see on her back, the windup that makes her function. These function of the Windup girls (there are more than just Emiko and I think there are some boy Windups also) is to find a master and obey their commands, they have to obey any command given to them. When the story introduces the listener to Emiko, it was well decriptive of where she was and what was happening to her. Emiko was in a club type place that men can abuse her and do things to her. Through every detail of it, I imagined how terrible that felt and to have men view a woman that way and not being able to do anything about it, I felt so sorry for Emiko. But towards the end of the story it was a surprise that she also designed as a weapon, she killed a man with her hands. At that point it change my idea of how Emiko might have looked if here was an Illustration of her. Know I can imagine her having the gentle looking eyes of wonder and hope, and some bruises or marking for fighting off people, and maybe she has a weapon or two on her or as part of her design.
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