The Windup Girl (2009)

Like his other book, Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi's story takes place in the future when fossil fuel reserves are used up, sea levels threaten coastal cities, and genetic companies are creating new species of plants and animals to help mankind. Unfortunately, there are also new species of diseases to destroy food crops and people. This new world has calories as the basis of world trade instead of oil. Taking place in Bangkok, we follow an American with a mission to find a rare seed bank, his plant manager who is a Chinese immigrant, a leader in the Trade Ministry's White Shirts, and a member of the Japanese New People, a genetically created and lab raised human known as a windup girl.

By then they were only mopping up. AgriGen and PurCal and the rest were shipping their plague-resistant seeds and demanding exorbitant profits, and patriotic generippers were already working to crack the code of the calorie companies' products, fighting to keep the Kingdom fed as Burma and the Vietnamese and the Khmers all fell. AgriGen and its ilk were threatening embargo over intellectual property infringements, but the Thai Kingdom was still alive. Against all odds, they were alive. As others were crushed under the calorie companies' heels, the Kingdom stood strong.

The thing I really loved about this book is how the reader is immediately immersed in the language and life of the characters - there is not easing into the story with descriptions of the city and explanations of the foreign terms. This book was fantastic!

My rating for this book: ++++1/2

The Golem's Eye (The Bartimaeus Trilogy Book Two) (2004)

Jonathon Stroud continues to give us an intriguing world and story in this second book of The Bartimaeus Trilogy. Now Nathaniel is given his magician name of John Mandrake (but Bartimaeus and readers still know him as Nathaniel) and is assigned to a new master, Ms. Whitwell. They are assigned to find out who or what is causing major damage to parts of London. Nathaniel calls on Bartimaeus, his djinni, to find out who the culprit is. Suspected are a group of commons called rebels since they are stealing magic items to use against the magicians.
One of these rebels is Kitty, a young lady we met in the first book. Now the chapters are from the vantage point of three different characters. We learn why Kitty hates magicians so much and learn how she became part of a gang that is instructed how to break into Westminster Abbey and pillage the tomb of one of England's magical heroes, Gladstone, for magical items buried with him.
We meet new creatures and follow Nathaniel and Bartimaeus on their quest to solve London's latest mystery. Along the way, we see how a ruling class continues to keep others at bay by using (or abusing) their "powers" and, as history proves, the ruled classes find ways to work their way out of subjugation. I'm on to the third book to see if revolution is in the wind and how Nathaniel, Bartimaeus, and Kitty make out.
My rating for this book: ++++