The Windup Girl

During the conflict between Environment and Trade, Akkarat is ultimately ousted. Kanya’s assassination of Elizabeth Boudry renders AgriGen defunct, and Anderson’s ugly death reinforces this end. Kanya reinstates the white shirts. The Child Queen, always precariously in power, has now come into her own. She takes the throne of the flooded city, and while the monsoons spell death they also can be seen as a rebirth, as rainwater to a parched wasteland regenerates life. The now-wet environs figure as a perfect home for Emiko; no longer does she have to worry about overheating. Anyone who bothers her she quickly kills, and she enjoys a peace and contentment heretofore unknown to her.

The arrival of the sickly Gibbons can be seen as a blessing in disguise. He has sought Emiko out, sympathizes with her, and understands her plight as no one else has. They dine and enjoy each other’s company, but always on her guard, Emiko tells him she despises him and that she could hurt him and Kip in a second. Always the ironic, jovial, and mercurial banterer, the brilliant Gibbons pities her, much in the same ways he has pitied the hated cheshires. He tells her that she can become the great ancestress of a new generation. He has always been fond of New Persons and thinks that they should rule the world. Selfishly, however, as a natural person, he will still have a claim in establishing this new civilization.

Instead of fleeing North with Kanya and the other residents of Bangkok, Emiko decides to stay close to the city. Gibbons promises her the world, quite literally. The novel concludes on a cautiously optimistic note. Kanya assassinates Elizabeth Boudry and moves to the uncertainties of the North; Hock Seng and Mai flee; Anderson dies from a horrific disease engendered by his greed and betrayal of others; and the spirit of Jaidee has perhaps moved on, his wife and children now dead. Emiko, once condemned to a soulless and sad existence, may in fact become the Queen of New Persons.