I was late in catching the craze on this one because I generally shy away from steampunk. But even the anti-steampunk people were saying, dude, you gotta read this book. And I recall it winning or being shortlisted for mumble number of awards.
Still haven't finished Windup Girl, but I have a feeling I will today as it's building to a climax bringing just about every single thread together (that I can think of), and I may even be up late reading it. But as it goes with books one really likes, I'll be left with a book I've just finished, and I'll want more. Which probably means I'll have to get Ship Breaker, too.
It's very strange that Paolo Bacigalupi got me off a Hemingway kick, one that I was loving (Under Kilimanjaro), and that was reading as research for a book that I am writing (Meat), but his writing is very enchanting. If I could describe it simply, I would say that it is a lot like reading China Miéville without all that horrid twisting of language and continual mood-setting words like ooze, filth, and ichor. It's dystopic to be sure, and while I think there are some very positive themes in the book, in general, it's kinda gross. But Miéville wrote books that were very charming, even as the settings had a certain filth and decrepitude–intentional of course–to them that I personally found pretty vulgar. So it is with Bacigalupi. He writes an environment in which sanitation has mostly been lost and disease runs rampant, poverty is the norm, and he writes it in such a way that we can observe and not feel as though we have been swimming through it when we put the book down. Perhaps that was not his goal. It seems to me that was Miéville's goal, and for that I rather thank Bacigalupi.
