55 pages • 1 hour read
Paolo BacigalupiA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Emiko sips water, grateful to be cooled. Hock Seng and Mai ask if she carried out the killings. Emiko admits to it, and contemplates killing both Hock and Mai, but she is tired. At that moment, Anderson and Carlyle enter the flat, laughing. Anderson asks Hock Seng what he wants. Hock says that the killer of the Somdet Chaopraya is valuable, and he wants a future. Carlyle retreats but Anderson sits down on the couch and winces. He asks Emiko if she killed the men and she confesses that she did so because they abused her. Anderson asks if she is a trained killer, but she says she is not. He says she could kill them all in an instant. Anderson tells Hock Seng he can’t have Emiko, then tells Hock that he can have his clipper ship company back and can keep Mai around. Carlyle re-enters, not having fled after all. Anderson tells Emiko he will get her away and then coughs violently. Mai recognizes that he has contracted the same illness as the factory workers exposed to the algae baths.
Akkarat becomes the new Somdet Chaopraya and appoints Kanya as the new head of the Environment Ministry. General Pracha is dead. The spirit of Jaidee wishes Kanya luck, which pains her greatly. Although the white shirts have been granted amnesty, Kanya hates Akkarat, as well as the role she herself played in the destruction of the ministry.
These final chapters constitute the beginning of the falling action of the novel. Kanya is promoted but it is a bitter victory. She hates Akkarat and Narong, whom she has formerly served. Carlyle and Hock Seng have abandoned Anderson; the only one who remains loyal is Emiko. The illness that kills Anderson is merely another plague caused by gene ripping. Many of the problems in the novel stem from human attempts to override the natural order and impose authority on nature and the food chain. Although Gibbons may be perceived as odious, in the long run, he has accurately assessed the past and the present, and has predicted the future of a world where global warming, selfish business interests in fossil fuels, and arbitrary power-plays have largely destroyed homeostasis.
By Paolo Bacigalupi