Available instantly

Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial

Hardcover
$18.91

Paperback
$10.30

$7.99 with 58 percent savings

Print List Price: $19.00

Promotions apply when you purchase

Sold by Random House LLC. Price set by seller.

Add

audiobook for $2.74 $21.83

Read with our free app

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Paolo Bacigalupi

Follow

The Water Knife Kindle Edition

by Paolo Bacigalupi (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

5,060 ratings

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

See all formats and editions

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A "fresh, genre-bending thriller” (Los Angeles Times) set in the near future when water is scarce and a spy, a hardened journalist and a young Texas migrant find themselves pawns in a corrupt game.

"Think Chinatown meets Mad Max." NPR, All Things Considered

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of June 2015: Three very different characters—an orphaned Texan teen marooned in Phoenix; the “water knife” Angel from Las Vegas who will break any law he needs to in order to pave the way for his boss to gain the water rights she wants; and journalist Lucy Monroe, who has adopted drought-decimated Phoenix as her own—thrust Bacigalupi’s near-future tale through violence and betrayal toward a blockbuster conclusion that could well be one of the best endings of the year. Murder and torture are everyday events in dusty Phoenix, which is loosely controlled by a sociopathic crime lord, a Chinese construction company that’s offering the only jobs in town, Californian interests, and Las Vegas’ shadowy water knives—former criminals and ex-military who enforce the water rights bought or extorted by their powerful boss. When a rumor surfaces of water rights so senior that they would trump all existing rights and give Phoenix a chance to bloom instead of continue its rampant slide into death by drought, the race is on to find the rights, and no one will survive unharmed. Bleak, troubling, and at the same time deeply hopeful as Bacigalupi’s complex characters define and defend their loyalties, The Water Knife delivers a final scene as unexpected as it is satisfying. --Adrian Liang

Review

“[A] fresh, genre-bending thriller. . . . Reading Paolo Bacigalupi's richly imagined novel The Water Knife brings to mind the movie Chinatown. Although one is set in the past and the other in a dystopian future, both are neo-noir tales with jaded antiheroes and ruthless kingpins who wield water as lethal weapons to control life—and mete out death. . . . Bacigalupi weaves page-turning action with zeitgeisty themes. . . . His use of water as sacred currency evokes Frank Herbert's Dune. The casual violence and slang may bring to mind A Clockwork Orange. The book's nervous energy recalls William Gibson at his cyberpunk best. Its visual imagery evokes Dust Bowl Okies in the Great Depression and the catastrophic 1928 failure of the St. Francis Dam that killed 600 people and haunted its builder, Mulholland, into the grave. . . . Reading the novel in 93-degree March weather while L.A. newscasts warned of water rationing and extended drought, I felt the hot panting breath of the desert on my nape and I shivered, hoping that Bacigalupi's vision of the future won't be ours.” —Denise Hamilton, Los Angeles Times

“Bacigalupi's characters are engagingly unpredictable, and his story blasts along like a twin-battery Tesla. The Water Knife is splendid near-future fiction, a compelling thriller–and inordinately fun.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A noir-ish, cinematic thriller set in the midst of a water war between Las Vegas and Phoenix. . . . Think Chinatown meets Mad Max.”—NPR, All Things Considered

"These days are coming, and as always fiction explains them better than fact. This is a spectacular thriller, wonderfully imagined and written, and racing through it will make you think—and make you thirsty.” —Lee Child, author of Personal

"An intense thriller and a deeply insightful vision of the coming century, laid out in all its pain and glory. It's a water knife indeed, right to the heart." —Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Aurora

"Anyone can write about the future. Paolo Bacigalupi writes about the future that we're making today, if we keep going the way we are. It makes his writing beautiful . . . and terrifying."—John Scalzi, author of Lock In

"The Water Knife is an noir-tinged, apocalyptic vision of the near-future: What will the world be like, and how will we live in it? Bacigalupi already seems to live there. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down.” —Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

“A fresh cautionary tale classic, depicting an America newly shaped by scarcity of our most vital resource. The pages practically turn themselves in a tense, taut plot of crosses and double-crosses, given added depth by riveting characters. This brutal near-future thriller seems so plausible in the world it depicts that you will want to stock up on bottled water.”—Library Journal, starred review

"The frightening details of how the world might suffer from catastrophic drought are vividly imagined. The way the novel's environmental nightmare affects society, as individuals and larger entities—both official and criminal—vie for a limited and essential resource, feels solid, plausible, and disturbingly believable. The dust storms, Texan refugees, skyrocketing murder rate, and momentary hysteria of a public ravenous for quick hits of sensational news seem like logical extensions of our current reality. An absorbing . . . thriller full of violent action."--Kirkus

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

There were stories in sweat.

The sweat of a woman bent double in an onion field, working fourteen hours under the hot sun, was different from the sweat of a man as he approached a checkpoint in Mexico, praying to La Santa Muerte that the federales weren’t on the payroll of the enemies he was fleeing. The sweat of a ten-year-old boy staring into the barrel of a SIG Sauer was different from the sweat of a woman struggling across the desert and praying to the Virgin that a water cache was going to turn out to be exactly where her coyote’s map told her it would be.

Sweat was a body’s history, compressed into jewels, beaded on the brow, staining shirts with salt. It told you everything about how a person had ended up in the right place at the wrong time, and whether they would survive another day.

To Angel Velasquez, perched high above Cypress 1’s central bore and watching Charles Braxton as he lumbered up the Cascade Trail, the sweat on a lawyer’s brow said that some people weren’t near as important as they liked to think.

Braxton might strut in his offices and scream at his secretaries. He might stalk courtrooms like an ax murderer hunting new victims. But no matter how much swagger the lawyer carried, at the end of the day Catherine Case owned his ass—and when Catherine Case told you to get something done quick, you didn’t just run, pendejo, you ran until your heart gave out and there wasn’t no running left.

Braxton ducked under ferns and stumbled past banyan climbing vines, following the slow rise of the trail as it wound around the cooling bore. He shoved through groups of tourists posing for selfies before the braided waterfalls and hanging gardens that spilled down the arcology’s levels. He kept on, flushed and dogged. Joggers zipped past him in shorts and tank tops, their ears flooded with music and the thud of their healthy hearts.

You could learn a lot from a man’s sweat.

Braxton’s sweat meant he still had fear. And to Angel, that meant he was still reliable.

Braxton spied Angel perched on the bridge where it arced across the wide expanse of the central bore. He waved tiredly, motioning Angel to come down and join him. Angel waved back from above, smiling, pretending not to understand.

“Come down!” Braxton called up.

Angel smiled and waved again.

The lawyer slumped, defeated, and set himself to the final assault on Angel’s aerie.

Angel leaned against the rail, enjoying the view. Sunlight filtered down from above, dappling bamboo and rain trees, illuminating tropical birds and casting pocket-mirror flashes on mossy koi ponds.

Far below, people were smaller than ants. Not really people at all, more just the shapes of tourists and residents and casino workers, as in the biotects’ development models of Cypress 1: scale-model people sipping scale-model lattes on scale-model coffee shop terraces. Scale-model kids chasing butterflies on the nature trails, while scale-model gamblers split and doubled down at the scale-model blackjack tables in the deep grottoes of the casinos.

Braxton came lumbering onto the bridge. “Why didn’t you come down?” he gasped. “I told you to come down.” He dropped his briefcase on the boards and sagged against the rail.

“What you got for me?” Angel asked.

“Papers,” Braxton wheezed. “Carver City. We just got the judge’s decision.” He waved an exhausted hand at the briefcase. “We crushed them.”

“And?”

Braxton tried to say more but couldn’t get the words out. His face was puffy and flushed. Angel wondered if he was about to have a heart attack, then tried to decide how much he would care if he did.

The first time Angel met Braxton had been in the lawyer’s offices in the headquarters of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The man had a floor-to-ceiling view of Carson Creek, Cypress 1’s fly-fishing river, where it cascaded through various levels of the arcology before being pumped back to the top of the system to run though a new cleaning cycle. A big expensive overlook onto rainbow trout and water infrastructure, and a good reminder of why Braxton filed his lawsuits on SNWA’s behalf.

Braxton had been lording over his three assistants—all coincidentally svelte girls hooked straight from law school with promises of permanent residence permits in Cypress—and he’d talked to Angel like an afterthought. Just another one of Catherine Case’s pit bulls that he tolerated for as long as Angel kept leaving other, bigger dogs dead in his wake.

Angel, in turn, had spent the meeting trying to figure out how a man like Braxton had gotten so large. People outside Cypress didn’t fatten up like Braxton did. In all Angel’s early life, he’d never seen a creature quite like Braxton, and he found himself fascinated, admiring the fleshy raiment of a man who knew himself secure.

If the end of the world came like Catherine Case said it would, Angel thought Braxton would make good eating. And that in turn made it easier to let the Ivy League pendejo live when he wrinkled his nose at Angel’s gang tattoos and the knife scar that scored his face and throat.

Times they do change, Angel thought as he watched the sweat drip from Braxton’s nose.

“Carver City lost on appeal,” Braxton gasped finally. “Judges were going to rule this morning, but we got the courtrooms double-booked. Got the whole ruling delayed until end of business. Carver City will be running like crazy to file a new appeal.” He picked up his briefcase and popped it open. “They aren’t going to make it.”

He handed over a sheaf of laser-hologrammed documents. “These are your injunctions. You’ve got until the courts open tomorrow to enforce our legal rights. Once Carver City files an appeal, it’s a different story. Then you’re looking at civil liabilities, minimally. But until courts open tomorrow, you’re just defending the private property rights of the citizens of the great state of Nevada.”

Angel started going through the documents. “This all of it?”

“Everything you need, as long as you seal the deal tonight. Once business opens tomorrow, it’s back to courtroom delays and he-said, she-said.”

“And you’ll have done a lot of sweating for nothing.”

Braxton jabbed a thick finger at Angel. “That better not happen.”

Angel laughed at the implied threat. “I already got my housing permits, cabrón. Go frighten your secretaries.”

“Just because you’re Case’s pet doesn’t mean I can’t make your life miserable.”

Angel didn’t look up from the injunctions. “Just because you’re Case’s dog don’t mean I can’t toss you off this bridge.”

The seals and stamps on the injunctions all looked like they were in order.

“What have you got on Case that makes you so untouchable?” Braxton asked.

“She trusts me.”

Braxton laughed, disbelieving, as Angel put the injunctions back in order.

Angel said, “People like you write everything down because you know everyone is a liar. It’s how you lawyers do.” He slapped Braxton in the chest with the legal documents, grinning. “And that’s why Case trusts me and treats you like a dog—you’re the one who writes things down.”

He left Braxton glaring at him from the bridge.

As Angel made his way down the Cascade Trail, he pulled out his cell and dialed.

Catherine Case answered on the first ring, clipped and formal. “This is Case.”

Angel could imagine her, Queen of the Colorado, leaning over her desk, with maps of the state of Nevada and the Colorado River Basin floor to ceiling on the walls around her, her domain laid out in real-time data feeds—the veins of every tributary blinking red, amber, or green indicating stream flow in cubic feet per second. Numbers flickering over the various catchment basins of the Rocky Mountains—red, amber, green—monitoring how much snow cover remained and variation off the norm as it melted. Other numbers, displaying the depths of reservoirs and dams, from the Blue Mesa Dam on the Gunnison, to the Navajo Dam on the San Juan, to the Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green. Over it all, emergency purchase prices on streamflows and futures offers scrolled via NASDAQ, available open-market purchase options if she needed to recharge the depth in Lake Mead, the unforgiving numbers that ruled her world as relentlessly as she ruled Angel’s and Braxton’s.

“Just talked to your favorite lawyer,” Angel said.

“Please tell me you didn’t antagonize him again.”

“That pendejo is a piece of work.”

“You’re not so easy, either. You have everything you need?”

“Well, Braxton gave me a lot of dead trees, that’s for sure.” He hefted the sheaf of legal documents. “Didn’t know so much paper still existed.”

“We like to make sure we’re all on the same page,” Case said dryly.

“Same fifty or sixty pages, more like.”

Case laughed. “It’s the first rule of bureaucracy: any message worth sending is worth sending in triplicate.”

Angel exited the Cascade Trail, winding down toward where elevator banks would whisk him to central parking. “Figure we should be up in about an hour,” he said.

“I’ll be monitoring.”

“This is a milk run, boss. Braxton’s papers here got about a hundred different signatures say I can do anything I want. This is old-school cease and desist. Camel Corps could do this one on their own, I bet. Glorified FedEx is what this is.”

“No.” Case’s voice hardened. “Ten years of back-and-forth in the courts is what this is, and I want it finished. For good this time. I’m tired of giving away Cypress housing permits to some judge’s nephew just so we can keep appealing for something that’s ours by right.”

“No worries. When we’re done, Carver City won’t know what hit them.”

“Good. Let me know when it’s finished.”

She clicked off. Angel caught an express elevator as it was closing. He stepped to the glass as the elevator began its plunge. It accelerated, plummeting down through the levels of the arcology. People blurred past: mothers pushing double strollers; hourly girlfriends clinging to the arms of weekend boyfriends; tourists from all over the world, snapping pics and messaging home they had seen the Hanging Gardens of Las Vegas. Ferns and waterfalls and coffee shops.

Down on the entertainment floors, the dealers would be changing shifts. In the hotels the twenty-four-hour party people would be waking up and taking their first shots of vodka, spraying glitter on their skin. Maids and waiters and busboys and cooks and maintenance staff would all be hard at work, striving to keep their jobs, fighting to keep their Cypress housing permits.

You’re all here because of me, Angel thought. Without me, you’d all be little tumbleweeds. Little bone-and-paper-skin bodies. No dice to throw, no hookers to buy, no strollers to push, no drinks at your elbow, no work to do . . .

Without me, you’re nothing.

The elevator hit bottom with a soft chime. Its doors opened to Angel’s Tesla, waiting with the valet.

Half an hour later he was striding across the boiling tarmac of Mulroy Airbase, heat waves rippling off the tarmac, and the sun setting bloody over the Spring Mountains. One hundred twenty degrees, and the sun only finally finishing the job. The floodlights of the base were coming on, adding to the burn.

“You got our papers?” Reyes shouted over the whine of Apaches.

“Feds love our desert asses!” Angel held up the documents. “For the next fourteen hours, anyway!”

Reyes barely smiled in response, just turned and started initiating launch orders.

Colonel Reyes was a big black man who’d been a recon marine in Syria and Venezuela, before moving into hot work in the Sahel and then Chihuahua, before finally dropping into his current plush job with the Nevada guardies.

State of Nevada paid better, he said.

Reyes waved Angel aboard the command chopper. Around them attack helicopters were spinning up, burning synthetic fuel by the barrel—Nevada National Guard, aka Camel Corps, aka those fucking Vegas guardies, depending on who had just had a Hades missile sheaf fired up their asses—all of them gearing up to inflict the will of Catherine Case upon her enemies.

One of the guardies tossed Angel a flak jacket. Angel shrugged into Kevlar as Reyes settled into the command seat and started issuing orders. Angel plugged military glass and an earbug into the chopper’s comms so he could listen to the chatter.

Their gunship lurched skyward. A pilot’s-eye data feed spilled into Angel’s vision, the graffiti of war coloring Las Vegas with bright hungry tags: target calculations, relevant structures, friend/foe markings, Hades missile loads, and .50-cal belly-gun ammo info, fuel warnings, heat signals on the ground . . .

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00NRQOR26
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage
Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 26, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1.6 MB
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 379 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780385352895
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0385352895
Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #123,585 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #523 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)
- #644 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
- #1,250 in Dystopian Science Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
5,060 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Paolo Bacigalupi

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in WIRED Magazine, Slate, Medium, Salon.com, and High Country News, as well as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. His short fiction been nominated for three Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best science fiction short story of the year. It is collected in PUMP SIX AND OTHER STORIES, a Locus Award winner for Best Collection and also a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly.

His debut novel THE WINDUP GIRL was named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. Internationally, it has won the Seiun Award (Japan), The Ignotus Award (Spain), The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis (Germany), and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France).

His debut young adult novel, SHIP BREAKER, was a Micheal L. Printz Award Winner, and a National Book Award Finalist, and its sequel, THE DROWNED CITIES, was a 2012 Kirkus Reviews Best of YA Book, A 2012 VOYA Perfect Ten Book, and 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist.

He has also written ZOMBIE BASEBALL BEATDOWN for middle-grade children, about zombies, baseball, and, of all things, meatpacking plants. Another novel for teens, THE DOUBT FACTORY, a contemporary thriller about public relations and the product defense industry was a both an Edgar Award and Locus Award Finalist.

Paolo's latest novel for adults is The New York Times Bestseller THE WATER KNIFE, a near-future thriller about climate change and drought in the southwestern United States. A new novel set in the Ship Breaker universe, TOOL OF WAR, will be released in October.

Customer reviews

5,060 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find this dystopian novel compelling, with a fast-paced plot and non-stop action. The book receives positive feedback for its interesting research about water rights and vivid descriptions, with one review noting its horrifyingly believable world-building. Customers praise the character development, with one highlighting the portrayal of morally gray characters. While some customers find the writing well-executed, others find it barely readable.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Select to learn more

Story quality Readability Character development Pacing Enjoyment Water issues Visual quality Writing quality

363 customers mention "Story quality"265 positive98 negative

Customers enjoy the compelling narrative of the book, with one customer noting its horrifyingly believable world-building and another highlighting how human nature drives the plot.

"...In the main, this is a sci-fi detective story, but in the 'True Detective' style, where we get intimate with victims and the blood flows freely...." Read more

"...important concerns facing the world today and turns them into a compelling narrative that will entertain (and perhaps even inspire) many people who..." Read more

"...And the plot really moves along, from murders to morgues to squatter camps to upscale bars, scattering bullets and bodies along the way...." Read more

"...Make no mistake, this is a superb, well thought out speculation as to a very possible dystopian society evolving from the one that can be found now..." Read more

150 customers mention "Readability"145 positive5 negative

Customers find the book to be an interesting and engaging read, with one customer describing the entire series as brilliant.

"...Highly recommend reading!" Read more

"...Bacigalupi’s work is a dystopian, speculative, noir thriller. It’s an excellent one...." Read more

"...With that out of the way. Let me add the good news. It is a good book. Well written and thought out...." Read more

"...Make no mistake, this is a superb, well thought out speculation as to a very possible dystopian society evolving from the one that can be found now..." Read more

118 customers mention "Character development"90 positive28 negative

Customers appreciate the character development in the book, finding them compelling, with one customer noting how the narrative is smoothly broken up by viewpoints from other characters.

"...with PB's writing, it is his well-developed, disparate and believable characters and their various relationships that really carry this book and..." Read more

"...with an interesting and tightly constructed plot and well developed characters...." Read more

"...Characters are interesting, there's some sex which isn't far fetched and quite a bit of violence...." Read more

"...areas of biospheric cautionary fiction with colorful detail, nuanced characters, and double-edged scientific advancement...." Read more

110 customers mention "Pacing"77 positive33 negative

Customers appreciate the book's pacing, describing it as a fast-paced thriller with non-stop action and timely content.

"...And while the story clips along at a great rate, there is always time to get into the heads - and hearts - of all the major players...." Read more

"...That gritty texture, however, contributes to a lightening fast thrill ride that kept me up late several nights in a row...." Read more

"...This is not a joyous book. There is no sudden uplifting of humanity. Nobody surprised me...." Read more

"...Engaging action set pieces, too, that have a very good flow and are smoothly broken up by viewpoints from other characters who are seeing the action..." Read more

74 customers mention "Enjoyment"58 positive16 negative

Customers find the book entertaining and really interesting to read about, with one customer describing it as an exciting ride.

"...Very cinematic, and entertaining if you have a high tolerance for typically R-rated everything--and don’t think about implications too much...." Read more

"...The book follows a few characters. They are all interesting and all extremely flawed. I like flawed characters though...." Read more

"...sayings (dirty words) and those seemed accurate and fun to see how theyre spelled...." Read more

"...a little too hectic, hardly pausing to take a breath, and hence often monotonous...." Read more

45 customers mention "Water issues"34 positive11 negative

Customers appreciate the book's focus on water issues, particularly its interesting research about water rights, with one customer noting how it illustrates the complex nature of these rights.

"...limiting factor for economies, so I like how this sorta addresses both water and economics. Ecology and economy do belong together, I think...." Read more

"...It focuses on the politics of water. Who has priority rights, and who doesn’t. Who gets water, and who doesn’t...." Read more

"...this thriller could have been so much better with a genuine lecture on water rights, especially now they are up for debate in California...." Read more

"...The water IS running out. The overdeveloped land IS drying up...." Read more

36 customers mention "Visual quality"28 positive8 negative

Customers appreciate the visual quality of the book, describing it as a compelling and vivid picture with a unique style.

"...into their inner world, and using their perspective to reveal some very vivid and intense imagery...." Read more

"...Very cinematic, and entertaining if you have a high tolerance for typically R-rated everything--and don’t think about implications too much...." Read more

"...And this is an exciting, engrossing tale of intrigue, passion, and ‘history as a hammer’, for all its darkness." Read more

"...is repeated in this novel, I found The Water Knife to be a far less effective depiction...." Read more

132 customers mention "Writing quality"90 positive42 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing quality of the book, with some finding it well-written and engaging, while others report that it is barely readable.

"...Let me add the good news. It is a good book. Well written and thought out. A relentless plot that is constantly kicking you in the face...." Read more

"...It had me hooked from the first few pages. It was well written, with an interesting and tightly constructed plot and well developed characters...." Read more

"...sex scene and a recurring anti-religion poke, so it is perhaps not an ideal YA novel...." Read more

"...I also purchased the audible version of this book. The narration was beautifully read and the realistic Latin accents added a definite Southwestern..." Read more

Reviews with images

See all photos

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

Treesong
A modern classic in dystopian apocalyptic fiction
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2015
Verified Purchase

After reading The Windup Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories, I was really looking forward to reading the next Paolo Bacigalupi book on my list. I am pleased to report that The Water Knife definitely lived up to my expectations.

The Water Knife is set in an all-too-believable dystopian future where global warming and overconsumption of water have lead to widespread water shortages in the American Southwest. “Widespread water shortages” is an understatement. The entire region is practically in a state of civil war. California, Nevada, and Arizona are fighting in the courts and sometimes in the streets to secure access to what little water remains. Politicians, businesspeople, organized crime networks, refugees, and other everyday citizens are all struggling in their own interrelated ways to survive and get ahead in the often violent and cruel circumstances of what’s left of human civilization.

This novel works on many levels — and works on all of those levels quite successfully.

The basic elements that I would expect of almost any good narrative are all strong here. The plot, characters, and setting are all complex and compelling. I often do my reading in fairly short bursts, and I found myself wanting to extend my reading time for as long as possible. Some narratives — even some really good narratives — rely heavily on one or two of these elements to carry the story. But the plot, characters, and setting all work together brilliantly, like complex parts of a well-oiled machine driving the narrative forward to its conclusion.

Bacigalupi is especially good at getting inside of each viewpoint character’s head, bringing the reader into their inner world, and using their perspective to reveal some very vivid and intense imagery. Anyone can tell the reader what the character is experiencing, but few authors can describe it so well that the reader feels like they’re right there along with the character, experiencing all of the joys and horrors (let’s be honest — mostly horrors in this case) that the character experiences. When I read the Water Knife, I feel like I’ve been transported into a very real apocalyptic future — a feeling that is terrifying on some level, but eminently rewarding as a reader.

The precise apocalyptic nature of the Water Knife is actually somewhat uncommon. This is what I’ve come to think of as a “mid-apocalyptic” or simply “apocalyptic” narrative rather than a “post-apocalyptic” one. In post-apocalyptic narratives, human society has collapsed entirely, leaving behind small to mid-sized bands of desperate individuals struggling to survive in the aftermath. Post-apocalyptic narratives are popular nowadays, and most stories I’ve come across lately are either post-apocalyptic or non-apocalyptic.

Water Knife is something in between. It offers a glimpse of an American society that is well on its way to complete collapse, but still not fully gone. To an extent, there is still a society similar to what exists today — a civil government with various government agencies, a market economy dominated various large corporations, information and communication technologies, etc. People in power are still trying to maintain the appearance that society has not, in fact, collapsed. But in a very real sense, it’s all either broken or falling apart. For large groups of people, it has already failed, leaving them in fringe situations that we would normally associate with a post-apocalyptic setting. This middle ground between today’s society and a future post-apocalyptic society is a very rich space for exploring the problems of today and the direction in which they may be taking us.

What I find most rewarding about this novel is the importance of its central themes of water scarcity and global warming. Bacigalupi doesn’t seem to be pushing any single solution or course of action here in the present day. However, presenting the potential horrors of where we’re headed in graphic detail is enough to inspire anyone with half a brain and half a heart to give some serious thought to what we can do in the here and now to avoid water wars and climate catastrophe. Bacigalupi takes some very important concerns facing the world today and turns them into a compelling narrative that will entertain (and perhaps even inspire) many people who otherwise might not give much thought to these concerns. Good fiction doesn’t always need a deep message about today’s society — but it doesn’t hurt, and those are some of my favorite narratives. Bacigalupi’s approach to the task of writing such narratives is among the best I’ve seen. I definitely recommend the Water Knife to other readers and look forward to reading more of his work!

Read more

20 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Joel Burcat
What Happens When the American West Runs out of Water?
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2024
Verified Purchase
In The Water Knife (Vintage Books, 2015), Paolo Bacigalupi imagines for us an American Southwest that is blisteringly hot, overcrowded, authoritarian, and desperately short of water. The year is not disclosed, but it’s only a few years in the future, just enough that we know it is the near future, but it is eerily familiar. The setting is mostly in Phoenix, Arizona and other places in the American Southwest.

Bacigalupi’s work is a dystopian, speculative, noir thriller. It’s an excellent one. The underlying message is that climate change and irresponsible development have resulted in and will result in catastrophic changes that are foreseen, preventable, but almost inevitable if nothing is done to prevent it.

Several stories converge in Bacigalupi’s novel. Angel Velasquez is a “water knife.” He is a scarred combination detective, spy, and assassin for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The man is as hard and noir as they get. Initially, he does not appear to have an ounce of empathy or compassion. He is on a mission in Phoenix for his employer to find and take the original nineteenth century documentation of the most senior of water rights in Arizona.

Lucy Munroe is a hardened Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who reports on serious news issues (as opposed to many other “iournos” who report only on the piles of murdered bodies). She is writing a story on the same water rights issue that brings Angel to Phoenix.

Maria Villarosa is a teenage Texas immigrant who dreams of escaping to Las Vegas, one of the few places that has prepared adequately for the perpetual drought. She gets by selling pours of water from old bottles she fills at Red Cross taps and illustrates the impact of the lack of water on average residents. The three characters come together at times and then again toward the end of the story.

Consider, for a moment, the reality that the amount of water in the American West is limited. It is governed by the insignificant amount of rainfall and snowfall received annually in the mountains, and the precipitously declining amount of water in underground aquifers. Add to this the perennial drought seen in the American West and the hordes of people who continue to move west of the Mississippi. To make matters worse, geological conditions add mineral salts to much of the water making it saline and unusable in places.

For decades, climate scientists, geologists, hydrologists, and environmentalists, have been raising alarms over the scarcity of water in the American West. They have focused on many things, but, in particular, the irresponsible amount of land development given the limited amount of available water, and the huge influx of residents to areas that cannot sustain this significant population growth without a supply of cheap water.

Looming large in The Water Knife is the landmark nonfiction book, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner (Viking 1986). In Reisner’s book, the author, perhaps better than anyone, describes the history and possible tragic outcomes arising from the failure to deal adequately with the American West’s pressing water issue. He describes the vast amount of tax dollars that have been spent damming up rivers, channelizing water for hundreds of miles, and pumping water from the ground. The payment from water users for this governmental largess has been pennies to the tax dollars spent. It has been the kind of tax boondoggle that generations of conservative Western politicians would have loudly decried as wasted government extravagance—if they weren’t nearly all parties to the taxpayer-funded gravy train. Consider The Water Knife to be a fictionalized version of what might happen as documented in Cadillac Desert.

Figuring into the story is that the American West has unique and odd water allocations schemes involving prior water rights and a Byzantine legal system that divides water among landowners in precise amounts. Generally, water allocations law is the subject of musty law textbooks and hundreds of court cases, many dating to the nineteenth century. It’s the stuff of convoluted original jurisdiction litigation before the United States Supreme Court. The problem is international in scope, too, as Colorado River water ultimately arrives, or is supposed to arrive, in Mexico. Mexico expects to receive a certain amount of water that is not too saline, but gets only a limited supply. Thus, it is also the subject of international treaties and disputes. This is the reality. Fortunately, for the reader, Bacigalupi tells us about this, without going into great detail.

So, what happens when the demand for water outstrips the available supply? This is not mere conjecture. There already are places in the Southwest that have no water. In Bacigalupi’s imagined world, states and water authorities literally fight over their water rights. His imagined American Southwest is not a place where anyone would want to live, but millions of people are stuck in place because restrictive internal immigrations laws, border walls, militias, national guards, and a receptive US Supreme Court prevent residents of one state from leaving and moving to another. Could this happen? What really will happen when the American West runs out of water? This is the imagined world of The Water Knife.

Bacigalupi’s Water Knife world is a desperate, bleak and terrible place. Bacigalupi provides almost no hope in this work. Nevertheless, his book is quite important because it illustrates one scenario which is awful to consider. The author does an excellent job of presenting it to us. His message, of course, is that we cannot allow this to happen.

A word about my main problem with this book. A number of the criminals found in this story have no compunction about using torture to extract the information they need from unfortunates or to punish people who have crossed them. Bacigalupi revels in describing the torture. As an author myself, it is a delicate balance to decide what you depict directly and what happens “offstage.” I could have done without these explicit and troubling descriptions of mayhem. The book would have been no less important without it. Also, these scenes detract from the important message contained in this work and will turn off some readers. While I highly recommend this book, if you cannot tolerate descriptions of torture, I suggest you skip those pages and move on to the next chapter.

That aside, the book has everything you would want in a classic American noir thriller. On top of that, Bacigalupi presents a serious look at the outcome of a pressing problem that is too often considered water under the bridge.

Read more

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Mp
Fantastic!
Reviewed in Canada on September 3, 2015
Verified Purchase

A story of what might happen if the water runs out in the Southwest and the cities and people have to fight for water and survival. Violent, graphic, sometimes hard to read, certainly not for everyone, but the characters are complex, well written, and the story holds you till the last page.

Read more
Report
Amazon Customer
In the genre of dystopian cli-fi this book is right up there with the best. Great characters that you actually build a rapport ...
Reviewed in Australia on December 23, 2017
Verified Purchase
This book had been on my 'to-read' list for a while, in fact ever since I read Bacigalupi's short story 'The Tamarisk Hunter' in the book compilation "I'm With the Bears: Short Stories From a Damaged Planet".

In the genre of dystopian cli-fi this book is right up there with the best. Great characters that you actually build a rapport with, a ripping narrative, beautifully evocative scenes of drought, devastation and urban decay, and the emerging realization that there probably aren't going to be a whole lot of happy endings in this tale of greed, corruption and (almost) every person for themselves!

Bacigalupi does a brilliant job of creating a near-future world of climate change induced drought in the south-western US, and cleverly brings in existing insights from scientists, journalists and other experts on the precarious nature of water scarcity and the myriad social implications once we exceed planetary tipping points. The generally pessimistic vision of human society in a situation of crisis is, I think, pretty accurate. Our neoliberal, consumer-driven society is far less adaptable to the existential crisis of climate change than popularly assumed, and in reality the transition to lawlessness and civil breakdown will probably be fairly swift (for example, witness how quickly advanced societies have pivoted to authoritarian and degrading immigration policies in recent years - a sign of things to come!).

The story itself is grim and violent, and at times reads a bit like a cli-fi version of a hard-boiled crime drama. However, the central characters are well-developed and nuanced with lots of first-person rationalizing and clever multi-perspective plot developments. Amongst the scramble for survival are some surprisingly compassionate actions that ring true (e.g. the unlikely hero or heroine facing insurmountable odds). There is no easy black and white morality in this tale, just plenty of shades of grey. Overall, a grim but compelling vision of our future world and thoroughly recommended.

Read more
Report
Julie Burridge
Dystopian drought
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2020
Verified Purchase
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. An intelligent look at a very possible future for that part of the world and its geography. The main characters were believable, admirable (no matter what their origins in life) and easy to identify with.

Read more
Report
GS
Excellent
Reviewed in France on August 28, 2019
Verified Purchase
J'ai acheté ce livre parce que j'avais adoré la femme automate.
Le style est complètement différent. C'est une prouesse que de savoir se renouveler à ce point.
Le livre est visionnaire. RdV dans 20 ans pour vérifier la prévision...

Read more
Report
Translate review to English
Cliente Amazon
High Octane Eco Novel
Reviewed in Spain on May 28, 2017
Verified Purchase
I enjoyed this novel by Bacigalupi. He writes a good story with strong female characters. The vision of a future world where global warming has worked its destruction on the world and venal idiocies of the kind we are familiar with in our own world continue is convincingly achieved.

Read more
Report

Follow the author

The Water Knife Kindle Edition

Customers who bought this item also bought

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Review

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

About the author

Paolo Bacigalupi

Customer reviews

Review this product

Customers say

Select to learn more

Images in this review

Reviews with images

Bacigalupi channels Dashiel Hammett and Roman Polanski

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern classic in dystopian apocalyptic fiction

4.0 out of 5 stars What Happens When the American West Runs out of Water?

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!

5.0 out of 5 stars In the genre of dystopian cli-fi this book is right up there with the best. Great characters that you actually build a rapport ...

5.0 out of 5 stars Dystopian drought

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent

4.0 out of 5 stars High Octane Eco Novel

Report an issue

A modern classic in dystopian apocalyptic fiction

What Happens When the American West Runs out of Water?

Fantastic!

In the genre of dystopian cli-fi this book is right up there with the best. Great characters that you actually build a rapport ...

Dystopian drought

Excellent

High Octane Eco Novel