I recently commented on the macho, mysoginistic writings of Lee Child in my foray into the world of Jack Reacher. I have been delaying on this post a bit because I have been trying to reason out what makes the protagonist of The Broken Empire series so different and why I find myself liking him, even though he is arrogant, power hungry, violent and woman using.
I had been lead to an interview with Ian Tregillis done by Charles Stross a while back, where Tregillis was speaking about the development of his Milkweed series and the comparisons that had been made with Stross’s own work. Having appreciated Stross’s The Laundry Series and the writing therein, I was eager to find Tregillis’s work and have a look.
What was especially appealing and, I assume, was the basis of comparison between these two writers was that a parallel reality, or speculative fiction, was being played with. Where Stross was influenced by H.P. Lovecraft and created a governmental agency that deterred the entrance of the Elder Gods from entering and taking over the world, Tregillis is playing a bit more with the mad sciencey and that there is something bigger in the universe than us piddly humans that has more hands in how the show is run.
A good friend recommended this novel through Goodreads, so I thought I should give it a shot. It has been a while since paying attention to awards and The Windup Girl holds two of the big ones; the 2009 Nebula Award and 2010 Hugo Award, as well as a few others.
It was bleak, illustrating some of the more undesirable traits of humankind during a time that really needs them, but that made the writing imaginative and different from anything that I had read in a while. Where apocalyptic science fiction has fallen on the standard tropes of zombies and plagues, The Windup Girl examines our potential future in a different way, one of unsustainable development and greed.
There are two things that I found myself having particular affinities to while reading this book. The first, I have been in Thailand and loved it, and that is where the book is set. The Thai language creeps into the dialogue, creating a sense of realism due to the differences and particularities of the Thai people and those who are not from that country.
As slow and painful as it was getting through this book, I managed to finish it just so that I could enter into discussions and debates with an understanding about what this was all about. By the end of it, I wanted to be on the killing floor to be put out of my misery, horrible.
I have to also admit a certain level of embarrassment according to my gender while I was reading this book. Ultimately, Child presents a testosterone driven, Call of Duty obsessed, teenage male fantasy. The main character, Jack Reacher, fires off a dozen different weapons, all of which he has an encyclopedic knowledge of, kills many, many people in near every which way imaginable, survives a prison scene that steps of the pages of some sort of script of stereotypes, and sleeps with the “hot female” cop after simply smiling at her.
The classic, a must-read of the hard-boiled detective genre. Something missed by other reviewers is that Philip Marlowe, the main character, is the original fast-talking detective that was an important shift in protagonists, introducing elements of the anti-hero and someone who had to operate outside of the establishment so that proper justice could be done. Also important is the narrative; while first person, Marlowe is retelling the events to the audience in perfect chronological sequence, he does not expose all of his thoughts to the reader, leaving gaps that are fully explained when Marlowe is ready to explain them, both to his audience and other characters. This is a technique that is rarely done well and Raymond Chandler, as well as Dashiel Hammet, remain the tops and should be thanked for their contribution to the detective, noire and spy genres of fiction.