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 things that sets Mr. Bacigalupi apart from other writers. He simply tells a story, usually the most likely actions and reactions to a crisis over a resource and how greed, survival, humanity and belief are effected. It is what it is. You can blame or you can press on to survive another day.

The scope of this story is narrow compared to his other stories, such as The Windup Girl, which paint a very imaginative world deeper into the future. The crisis here is more eminent and perhaps closer to becoming non-fiction, thus lacking some of the technology seen throughout his other works. In this aspect, Paolo Bacigalupi has maintained a good time-line in relation to his other works.

Well done sir, well done.