I have a hard time being critical of books. There are genuinely bad books, trashy, low brow, unedited, plotless books. This book is not one of those. But the characters were not gripping. The middle of the book was the most interesting, with a soft beginning and stutterstop, halting and broken ending. It contains mostly unrelatable characters and plodding world building.Very grand ideas explored to be fair. But in largely uninteresting and mundane ways and so many missed opportunities. This either needed to be a short story (or dare I say it) a much larger work to explore the ideas and characters presented.There are also several painfully explicit moments, that do work to build sympathy (a rare moment indeed) for the character, but are some of the hardest pages to read I've ever encountered. For a book with so many accolades and awards, I was disappointed (City and the City deserved to win the Hugo award tie). Skip this and go to "Ship Breaker" for better action, plot and characters. Oh...my...good...god! I have no idea why this book received so much attention. I picked this book up to read three times, I put it down unfinished, disinterested the first two times, finally finishing it now. I was convinced that it would be good and I should like it, I wanted to like it, the premise is great, and I will admit that there were some laudable moments, but overall the book failed to present any characters that I cared about and the plot was overwrought.I usually hate bashing a book, because clearly I am not published and or award winning, I do respect (and envy) those who put themselves out there as authors, but ... Seriously!
What do You think about Windup Girl, The (2009)?
Try as I might, i could not get into this book - made it about 1/3rd through and stopped.
—sophia8
