XY's Book Corner: The Windup Girl

Grade: B+/A-

I received The Windup Girl as an early Christmas Gift and breezed through it. I enjoyed both the pacing and the plot of the book. The setting is dark: industrial corporations have unleashed man-made plagues to attack food sources and to create demand for their plague resistant food supplies. The story follows an agent of one of these corporations looking for new genes from old/lost foods for the company to manipulate. His life intersects a number of other characters with different motives and purposes, including a "windup" genetically modified person. The book reminded me of Altered Carbon, which I thoroughly enjoyed. While the writing is immersive, I felt I could have used more background into the story world - Bacigalupi has written a number of short stories and in retrospect, I would have read those before reading The Windup Girl.