The reviews on The Windup Girl have been astonishingly good. Here’s the roundup, with links to the originals:
Publishers Weekly: (Starred Review) “Complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best… clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.”
Library Journal: (Starred Review) East meets West in a clash of cultures brilliantly portrayed in razor-sharp images, tension-building pacing, and sharply etched characters.
SF Signal: (Five out of Five Stars) “Disturbing… beautiful, fast-paced, exciting…and also a novel of hope. Unlike many dystopian authors, Bacigalupi knows that at our core humans always struggle against any challenge. While we may not consistently do right, we consistently hope to do better.”
SciFi Wire: “[an] extraordinary, virtuoso, shock-immersion rendering of [a] transformed world.”
Nancy Kress: “The political maneuvering is constant, intricate, and all too believable. So is the inevitable violence. However, more interesting than either are the choices — moral, practical, philosophical, emotional — that the characters are driven to make.”
Io9: “The Windup Girl is obviously about the geopolitics of the present… and yet Bacigalupi never slides into moralism or judgment. All his characters have their flaws and heroic moments … Ultimately that’s what makes this debut novel so exciting. It’s rare to find a writer who can create such well-shaded characters while also building a weird new future world.”
BookPage: “The Windup Girl will almost certainly be the most important SF novel of the year.”
I’m honestly blown away at the response. I felt very unsure of this book as I was finishing it, so it’s a huge relief to hear from more and more readers that it works for them. I think this is the moment where I thank my wife and son again for putting up with me for the last three years while I was writing it.