The Water Knife - Paolo Bacigalupi

 

I assume that someone online recommended this 2015 dystopia novel. Set in the not-too-distant future, the southwest of the USA is in a drought - but now “drought” no longer means temporary, it is simply the state that exists. Dust storms are continuous, many cities have collapsed from the lack of water and the Southern Nevada Water Authority is now a militarized organization that controls water lines and bombs or murders any one - or any city - that gets in their way.

Phoenix is a dying city where the inhabitants are barely scraping by, except for the "Fivers", those who have the money to live in one of the all-inclusive apartment complexes that actually has water to spare (although they won't spare it to anyone outside its walls) and all of the luxuries that we take for granted. The state borders are all patrolled and no one can come or go without special authorization, so those in the city are trapped unless they can come up with enough money to escape.

Here, three disparate characters collide - a (male) Vegas "water knife" (basically an enforcer for the Water Authority, a (female) journalist who is getting heat for writing about the travesties that are occurring, and a young (woman) local who is just trying to survive, and while she is brighter and gutsier than most, it takes more than that to escape. These three merge via a couple of Fivers who were planning a secretive big score - one being a colleague of the knife, one a friend of the journalist and one who simply picked up the local for a night of sex - but they end up dead and these three are involved and trying to discover what the score was that was worth torturing and killing for.

Overall, it's a good, gripping tale, but there are some issues for me - some of the made-up terms take a little too long to decipher, some of the tangents are drawn out a bit, some bits are not adequately explained and things like the journalist shrugging off being tortured for hours seem somewhat unrealistic. Some of the plot is painfully obvious, as well - so much so that I guessed it immediately, even though it dragged on for hundreds of pages after. And, I know this book is ten years old, but the fact that there are newsprint publications everywhere seems kinda old fashioned considering the other technology available, but maybe that is also supposed to show the difference between the haves and the have-nots.

A good, though flawed, story that did have a surprise twist ending, and a sobering look at the reality that is certain to come, particularly with the administration that we are getting next year. This won't be fiction for long, unfortunately!