Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Narrator: Jonathan Davis
Duration: 19 hours, 32 minutes
Publisher: Brilliance Audio (May 2010)
Program Type: Audiobook
Emiko is the windup girl of the title. She is an engineered being who has been left in Bangkok by the rich Japanese businessman who brought her there as his secretary and later found it cheaper to abandon her than to pay the fees for her to leave the country with him. Her presence in Thailand is illegal, and she lives in danger of being mulched by the White Shirts who are the Environmental Ministry's military police. She is forced to perform nightly at a seedy sex club by the club's owner, who bribes the White Shirts to ignore her presence. She crosses paths with Anderson Lake, an American hoping to take advantage of Thailand's political unrest to further his company's goals.
The story is set in a dystopian near future in which the world oil economy has been replaced by an economy based on calories. The author does not give a great deal of background as to how this "contraction" occurred, but simply presents it as a fact. Genetic engineering is commonplace in both food and living creatures, including Emiko.
The pacing of the story is fast, and the characters are well developed and multidimensional. The narrator did an excellent job of voicing all of the characters. I look forward to reading more by this author and to listening to more books by the narrator.
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