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Loading... The Water Knife: A novel (edition 2015)by Paolo Bacigalupi (Author)
Work InformationThe Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
  
Books Read in 2016 (103) » 23 more ALA The Reading List (45) Urban Fiction (18) Sense of place (82) Reading 2016 (2) Strange Cities (17) To Read (243) Science Fiction (42) Character-driven SF (49) Climate Change (18) No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) sarcher | May 8, 2024 |  With that out of the way. 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. When you are done reading it you will feel a little drained and then immediately want everyone who is ignoring California's current drought to read it. I had a few parts of the book that I thought were a little unnecessary to the story. Honestly, the sex scenes felt a little out of place. They kind of zapped me out of a book I was really interested in. I have nothing against sex in books. It just didn't do it for me in this story. Mileage will vary on that problem though. It certainly isn't enough to stop you from reading it. The book's plot feels dangerously close to our currently reality. Water becomes scarce on the west coast of the United States and Mexico and suddenly it is every state for themselves and the most powerful people are those who can manipulate the water rights to their advantage. One of the best parts of the story is witnessing the monstrosity that California becomes. The book follows a few characters. They are all interesting and all extremely flawed. I like flawed characters though. There is a constant struggle of people trying to rise above the disaster around them. The book is so grounded in reality that watching them get squashed by the machine can be a little depressing. This is good science fiction and I hope it stays science fiction and not a startling accurate prediction of our future. ( ) cdaley | Nov 2, 2023 |  ) keithostertag | May 10, 2023 |  ) JudyGibson | Jan 26, 2023 | ) burritapal | Oct 23, 2022 |
To some critics and commentators, climate change is also having a deep effect on literature, as more authors focus more closely on the actual and possible consequences of the subject in their fiction. The genre, if it can be called that yet, represents a loose affiliation that stretches back at least to J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World and includes such authors as Ian McEwan, Ursula LeGuin, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood. The Water Knife is perhaps the best, most-recent example of "climate fiction," and it expertly taps a wellspring of fascination and fear that runs beneath a culture ever digging a deeper hole for itself and the environment. In The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi's best-selling, Hugo- and Nebula-winning debut, the author imagines a 23rd century in which the forces of commerce have run amok over the basic, biological building blocks of life. In his equally powerful sophomore novel, The Water Knife, he takes a similar approach to an inorganic substance without which human life wouldn't exist: H2O. But where The Windup Girl takes place hundreds of years from now in Southeast Asia, The Water Knife hits closer to home for U.S. readers. Its setting is the American Southwest, at a time in the near future when Britney Spears is toothless and old, the country is plagued by climactic calamities and the Southwest's dwindling water supply is controlled by robber barons. .... Bacigalupi plays on a grand scale, but he does so with a keen eye for detail... His big triumph, though, is never forgetting that The Water Knife is a thriller at its pounding heart. Even amid reams of deeply researched information about the economy, geology, history and politics of water rights and usage in the U.S., he keeps the plot taut and the dialogue slashing.  "But this is no pastiche; Bacigalupi weaves an engrossing tale all his own, crackling with edgy style." "With elements of Philip K. Dick and Charles Bowden, this epic, visionary novel should appeal to a wide audience."  "An absorbing, if sometimes ideologically overbearing, thriller full of violent action and depressing visions of a bleakly imagined future." Is abridged inAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fiction.
Literature.
Science Fiction.
Thriller.
HTML:WATER IS POWER In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez â??cutsâ?ť 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 No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.83)
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