It is an interesting book, and I was quite absorbed by the reading. Though I actually felt that Emiko's story was more compelling than the rest of the books, so whenever I was reading about someone else, I just wanted to get back to her.

Set in a world in which genetic modification has become normal, the books tells the story of a group of people living in Bangkok. We have different politicians who are constantly fighting for power, Anderson Lake, a man hired to weaken Thai economy, and Emiko, a Japanese abandoned windup girl, forced into prostitution.

Even if I have not live anything of what she lived, I felt very close to Emiko as a character. While with all the other characters I felt quite distant (and I was angry at them a lot of times), she felt so close and real that was unbelievable. Her longings for freedom and being able to chose by herself were very powerful. And I think that she was probably the most human character in the book, despite being a windup and not considered a person by all the other characters. She is the ultimate embodiement of the woman-object, but she also intends and actively tries to move away from it, even if she is genetically designed to, basically, be an object. Oh, and every time I read about the abuse she was subjected to, I became really angry. She was sensitive and yet she was treated as a machine, as if her feelings didn't even matter. And it made me more angry because I know that that's reality for lots of women all over the globe. Awful, really.

The author makes a lot of very good world-building (something that is sort of missing from most dystopias you can find nowadays). I mean, he really worked with the WORLD as a whole, not just the US. And I also liked the way in which he presented what had happened before. Little bits of information here and there, comments by the characters and so on. It felt realistic in a way that lenghty exposition just can't. And his work really shows in the way in which he portrays the 23rd century Thai society.

The world presented was so utterly interesting. The genetic engineering and the creatures that developed through it was indeed quite amazing. I want a Cheshire cat for myself! I think that there's a lot to explore there. I mean, all those differents castes and the relations that people established with these new beings are crazy. Especially when it came to New People. It was shown that they were sentient beings, capable of feeling, bleeding and thinking. And yet, people still thought of them as animals. Even lower than animals, because in the Buddist tradition shown in the novel, animals have souls. Windups didn't.

My only problem with the book has to do with its pacing. At some points it felt as if it was dragging unnecesarily and I just wanted to read about Emiko. I got the feeling that the book could've been a lot more interesting (though I don't mean it was uninteresting at all) if the story was completely focalized in Emiko. It would've been amazing to read about all the events in the novel only from her perspective. It is true that by having different character's points of view we get a bigger picture, but I'd say that bigger doesn't always mean better.