The Water Knife
2015
- water rights
- droughts
- fiction
- fiction, thrillers, general
- fiction, dystopian
- fiction, science fiction, general
- dystopias
- western stories
- nyt:hardcover-fiction=2015-06-14
- deserts
The story
The American Southwest has been decimated by drought. Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches, deciding if it should just take the whole river all for itself. Into the fray steps Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel "cuts" water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert and that anyone who challenges her is left in the gutted-suburban dust. 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. Decimated by drought, Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches, waiting. Into the fray steps Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez, who "cuts" water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority and its boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert and that anyone who challenges her is left in the gutted-suburban dust. He becomes a pawn in a game far bigger, more corrupt, and dirtier than he could have imagined.
What it’s like
Sun-bleached and dust-choked, with the grit of a western: wide desert vistas under a merciless white sky, dry washes and cracked reservoirs, and the glassy sheen of arcology towers rising out of gutted suburbs. Paolo Bacigalupi's prose is lean and hard-edged, shifting between close third-person chapters that feel like cold coffee and rain-starved air, with the heat always present on the page. The mood is tense and grimy, a steady undercurrent of paranoia and moral rot rather than a single crescendo, and it suits a late-night read with the lights low, or a long hot afternoon when you want to feel the thirst. Violence is frequent and often sudden, with killings, torture, and bodies left in the dust, and some of it is graphic, though the sex is minimal and the cruelty is mostly transactional. Its people are compromised and hardening: a fixer who has learned to cut without flinching, a reporter and a runaway who slowly discover what they're willing to risk for water. It is for readers who want dystopian speculative fiction with a noir edge, sharp politics, and a landscape that feels like a character.
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