RTH 2010 (Tie): ‘The Windup Girl’ by Paolo Bacigalupi ★★★★

Now I have simultaneously uploaded my review of the other winning novel for 2010 China Miéville's The City and the City, a very different novel from this one but one that I consider brilliant in its own right.

You have to work for this book's rewards and it is a polarizing love it or hate it novel among SF fans at large but once you're committed Bacigalupi's storytelling is never less than electric and his characters, human or windup develop a real connection to the reader that keeps them from being overwhelmed by the obsessively detailed world.