Tuesday, November 6, 2012
The Wind-up Girl
After finishing The Wind-up Girl I must say that it is one of my favorite books. I loved the dystopian post-fossil fuel world which uses animal labor rather than combustion engines and the idea of a world controlled by food monopolies. I felt that the story had excellent pacing, and sometimes I had to force myself to put it down. I also enjoyed how each chapter switched to different character's perspectives and showed how each big event affected each character before bringing them all together at the end. I know no character in this story can really be considered "the good guy", but I couldn't help but root for Anderson Lake. He reminded me so much of Aaron Eckhart's character in Thank You for Smoking that I couldn't help but like him. The only part of the book I had a problem with was the epilogue. It was a little too open-ended for my taste and I was hoping for something a little happier.
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I liked that it switched character viewpoints. Although sometimes I kept wanting to know what was happening to a particular character and had to wait.
ReplyDeleteDitto on the switched viewpoints. I really enjoy limited thrid person perspectives. As a bio major and a kid who grew up in agriculture, I really appreciated the GMO background and found it really enthralling.
ReplyDeleteThat being said though, I had some issues with the book. The plot got a bit thick towards the end of the book. I feel like Bacigalupi created a fantastic world and basis for it, but kind of fell through with the actual story.
I liked how each individual had their own story and viewpoint as well. However, sometimes it was hard for me to switch gears into the different mind sets of the characters. The story was not exactly my favorite one I have ever read. I thought that sometimes the plot seemed very busy and it would get confusing at times. Overall, it was a great book.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a while to pick up on the switching viewpoints, but once I got the hand of it, it wasn't that bad. I do second Bryan's opinion about the story falling through in such a fantastic world. I would very much like to see what someone else could do with the story maybe in a different location like North America or Europe.
ReplyDeleteThe alternating viewpoints was a nice change though sometimes I kind of wished that there would be a bit more of that characters story. Perhaps if the narrative changed every few chapters as opposed to every chapter? In any case it wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected based on the first few chapters.
ReplyDeleteThese are interesting perspectives on the viewpoint switching. I'm thinking about novels I can recall reading, and it seems like they almost always involve switching between different third person viewpoints. There are notable exceptions, like Harry Potter or this week's Dreadnought, but it seems to me that most books follow that pattern. Almost every Star Wars novel, Game of Thrones, the Wheel of Time series, and others. I guess I'm just so used to it I'm surprised that it's unusual for some people.
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