"We are alive. We are alive when whole kingdoms and "Countries are gone. When Malaya is a morass of killing. When Kowloon is underwater. When China is split and the Vietnamese are broken and Burma is nothing but starvation. The Empire of America is no more. The Union of the Europeans splintered and factionalized. And yet we endure, even expand. The Kingdom survives."

The Windup Girl is a cyberpunk, specifically biopunk I would say, where Thailand has arisen as a major power in the world due to foresight. When the world went to pieces because of viruses that eradicated food supplies , Thailand closed itself off and got above the curve. In this future, the oil industry has collapsed and scarcity is focused on food, so it is technically a dystopia. But decidedly there is hope, they are on a precipice yet, all is not lost. There is prosperity here.

"The ecosystem unravelled when man first went a-seafaring. When we first lit fires on the broad savannas of Africa. We have only accelerated the phenomenon. The food web you talk about is nostalgia, nothing more. Nature." He makes a disgusted face. "We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it.”

Paolo's prose are completely beautiful and his world building is amazing. From colloquial terms, to food, to the thought processes of the various characters he inhabits as the narrative shifts. The pacing is perfect, with the climax shifting the narrative often and the beginning having long meandering thoughts that perfectly embody the characters. Every moment feels earned and the world feels real and often visceral.

“A sudden eruption, and the surprise of realizing that the world he understands is not the one he actually inhabits.”

While I've heard some people find the characters unlikable, which is why it took me a while to read the book in the first place unfortunately, I disagree completely! Each one could be aspects of one fully fledged in it's focus, in fact I found it impossible to dislike one because each are trapped in their own circumstance with the only truly one transcending their nature, to which they were shackled more than any other. It's a beautiful exploration of ones sense with the embodiment of each targeting a radicalized circumstance.

"We rest in the hands of a fickle god. He plays on our behalf only for entertainment, and he will close his eyes and sleep if we fail to engage his intellect."

The narrative is careful not to assign blame and allow the reader to discern the morality here. Though, the book is hard to read at times because of it's unyielding gaze at the depravity that humanity has to offer, specially for The Windup Girl, Emiko. If you have a hard time with fiction that has abuse and rape and dehumanization of people, specifically women, there will be some very hard parts to get through. You may consider passing on it entirely in fact.

"His words have the finality of true authority. Reflexively, Emiko starts to bow, acquiescing to his wishes. She stops short. You are not a dog, she reminds herself. You are not a servant. Service has gotten you abandoned amongst demons in a city of divine beings. If you act like a servant, you will die like a dog."

Ultimately The Windup Girl ended up specifically resonating with me because it masterfully wove a fiction that was captivating and was a significant exploration of the setting as much as the characters. This isn't all that common with cyberpunk, where the setting is a living breathing thing. There are social systems being examined but how the characters effected the city and how these systems made this unique place was interwoven in the perception of the characters, instead of the usual critical analysis of it that often comes with the genre. Usually a data dump, for example, is what establishes what we need to know about the setting. We are still learning about it until the end, more than anything I felt like the setting was a character in this story. I read slowly and savored every minute in the 500 page book.

“All is transient. Even bo trees cannot last.”

When you are driven from your home, or constructed by others to fit into what they think you should be. When you are owned despite coming from privilege. When you are unyielding in your views and your world was razed. What is the responsibility you have to those around you? How are you a product of your circumstances and what is freedom when we are bound by it. What responsibility do we have to ourselves despite them as well?

“I was asleep. All along, I was asleep and never understood.

But now, as he stares at the relic bo tree, something shifts.

Nothing lasts forever. A kuti is a cell. This cell is a prison. He sits in a prison, while the ones who took Chaya live and drink and whore and laugh. Nothing is permanent. This is the central teaching of the Buddha. Not a career, not an institution, not a wife, not a tree. . . All is change; change is the only truth.”

This is centrally what I found the story was about, a commentary on change; both the freedom of it and the restrictions. As well as the responsibility we have to ourselves and one another and the agency we think we have; and how beautiful and terrible that is throughout the course of our lives. The architect of our own agency may only be ourselves -- everything else is a truth we must accept or we may well be destroyed.

5/5 for me. I could not put it down and I am sure I'll revisit it before the year ends. I can't think of any flaw, so, so good.