Comments (24)

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Jul 24, 2021rukon rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
Expected more from this book. Thin plot. Some sex and violence. Way too much conversation that wasn't additive. I was bored 50 pages in, and the book reminded me why I don't read fiction very often.
Aug 02, 2020
A native son from west of the Pecos I'm familiar with water resources and attended body recovery divers at The Blue Hole of Santa Rosa. The lower extent is gated and should my reader in our future walk in a dry hole down to open…
Aug 24, 2019PASAYTEN57 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
not for the faint of heart. this WILL be our future if we don't change our ways. Much like The Wind Up Girl, the possibility of a very disturbing future awaits us. Sooner than we think!
Jun 22, 2019
Just reading Where The Water Goes was enough knowledge to make me a water-hoarder and fear for the future generations. This read makes it all too clear what is in store.
Jan 18, 2019
Outside my genre comfort zone.
Jul 09, 2018bwrogers rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
There's books that when finish them, you put them down and hold yourself in the moment, hoping to savor the feeling for just a moment longer. The Water Knife is not one of them. The terrifying near-future it portrays in grim detail is…
Jun 28, 2018zpare rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
I found this book difficult to get into. It has an interesting plot but I found that I couldn't get used to the characters.
Sep 07, 2017SCL_Justin rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
The Water Knife takes the classic cinematic cyberpunk image of a rain-soaked Los Angeles and tells a Blade Runnerish story in the climatechange-stricken American Southwest. It has that cyberpunk feel but is focused less on whiz-bang…
Aug 24, 2017isaachar rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
The southwestern United States in a near future where the aquifers dry out before the population can adapt, and an ongoing drought paired with temperatures too warm for mountain snow dry up most of the rivers. States collapse as they lose…
Mar 31, 2017Megan_PNW rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
A bleak book that challenges us to consider what happens when something we take for granted becomes scarce. The plot is a little slow to start but ramps up into quite the page-turner!
Feb 16, 2017tgaddo rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
I liked it. I got a couple of friends who retired to AZ to read it. The report they'll never look at running water the same again.
Dec 06, 2016
In our current reality where California has experienced serious drought the last five years, where forces of ignorance, cynicism, and division are ascendant in the world, where the chasm between rich and poor grows ever wider, and where…
Dec 05, 2016JohnK_KCMO rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
I have a terrifying suspicion that future generations will consider this book prophetic, as we today view Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave New World". Bacigalupi presents a dystopia that grows too neatly from our present-day reality.
Jun 01, 2016libraridan50 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Rivals The Windup Girl for his best work.
May 11, 2016PimaLib_CinthiaT rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Geez, O Man! Let's just take the real issue of the day and carry it to it's worse case scenario...OMG! It's a ride.
Apr 25, 2016otterno11 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Bleak, brutal, and believable, Paolo Bacigalupi’s latest eco-thriller, The Water Knife, turned out to be quite the page turner, and I burned through it in a matter of (busy) days. In spite of Bacigalupi’s hard boiled sci-fi prose, this is…
Apr 22, 2016knitter2248 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
From the 2015 Southwest Books of the Year. Apt for us here in Arizona, the book foreshadows what life would be like if our water supplies dry up. A dark novel, pitting Las Vegas against Phoenix, and the hunting and acquiring of water…
Jan 05, 2016DKS_Portland rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
This book is an over-dramatized take on a possible post-apocalyptic world where water is the limiting resource and the various western states forbid travel across borders. Highly unbelievable story with prose that is antithesis of…
Sep 08, 2015Greenman452 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Water has always been fought over in the Western U.S. Current climate change brings this fight to the surface again. This book addresses a future without enough water to go around. Class differences exacerbate the situation. Civilization…
Aug 17, 2015mblummichaels rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
I was all set to stop reading this book, as it was a drag; but I read the Abigaile comment, so I trudged on. Her comment about the slow start was right on, if a bit mild, as it took my reading of almost 2/3rds of the book before it became…
Aug 13, 2015booktigger rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Water rights, climate refugees, state borders and an all too possible and frightening future. This book is a must read for anyone concerned about the future of our world.
Jul 22, 2015Alex Falck rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Paolo Bacigalupi has been one of my favorite authors since I read The Windup Girl, and this book did not disappoint! It's set in the near future, perhaps 50 years from now (or less). Although it started off a little slowly, by the time the…
Jun 06, 2015yo918 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Wow. The issue of water use, especially concerning places like Los Angeles and Las Vegas and Phoenix and the Imperial Valley and anywhere else that really shouldn't even exist considering they are living on borrowed time and water they…
Apr 23, 2015JCLGreggW rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Paolo Bacigalupi's THE WATER KNIFE is one of the year's best releases, centering around an American Southwest ravaged by climate change and where rights over the world's most valuable resource, water, is desperately fought over by states…