The Water Knife

paperback, 384 pages

Published May 26, 2015 by Alfred a Knopf.

ISBN:
9781101875490

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (44 reviews)

In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to pile up, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger and more corrupt than they could have imagined, and when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.

9 editions

Review of 'The Water Knife' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I've completely enjoyed every book I've read by Paolo Bacigalupi and the undertones of his futuristic vision are not at all lost on me. I get it, Paolo, I get it.

The Water Knife, for me, is the weakest of all his books I've read so far. It is a story about people, as all his books are, and how they react to, and survive, a crisis, again, like in all his books. This one differs in that the events occur in the near-future whereas most of his other books happen deeper into the future. As the title suggests, the crisis in this book deals with access to water.

The story is good. It paints a bleak and dry future for common folk and an opposite future for those with money and power. It does not follow a typical rebellion versus the empire story line. This is one of those …

Review of 'The Water Knife' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I liked this much better than his previous book, largely because I found it more plausible. While it probably will play out differently than he writes, there's clearly some sort of reckoning coming for the long-term use of water to make the SW United States a hospitable place for millions of people to live.

Review of 'The Water Knife' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I have enjoyed (if that’s the right word) Bacigalupi’s vision of the near future in his young adult works, Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities. In The Water Knife, he returns to adult fiction and by adult I mean that the story is reasonably complicated and deals with mature concepts.

The Water Knife depicts a near future where state and corporate factions fight for water rights in a crumbling South West America (Nevada, California, Utah, Texas Arizona). The situation is not quite open warfare, a federal government still exists but states act to protect their borders from refugees (Texans get it bad in this future) moving from the poorer states.

The story focuses largely on a reporter and a water knife(a trouble shooter / trouble starter for one of the states) as they become embroiled in a search for old water rights that could upset the well laid plans of …

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