The Water Knife

Read the first third of the book, enjoyed it thus far. It's a dark world, which became a turn off due to a personal setback.

Disappointing second novel. Repetitive, too much gratuitous violence, heavy handed, and missing the surprising ideas that mad the windup girl so remarkable.

3.5 Cool book. A bit bleak with the outlook on human condition in general though. And I was somehow surprised by so vivid descriptions of violence and sex. The pacing was great in the second half, but the first one was dragging a bit too much for my liking and I was quite disconnected from the main characters.

The kind of bleakness and nihilism I tend to avoid nowadays, because it just feels too extreme and unnuanced. This is almost a grimdark story, bit too much for my taste.

Ignoring that, there's some strong characters and it's certainly a very quick read. Felt like a Scalzi to me, with its dialogue and focus on action.

If you want to read a story about how all people are backstabbing, raping and murdering scum who will betray anyone as long as it's to their advantage... If you want to read about lots of torture and killing and monsters... This is the book for you.

This book builds a great world and a great thriller plot and then mostly fills it with terrible writing. But still a fun read.

I couldn't get into this one. It was from three different perspectives and just too ambitious for the author.

Similar to The Windup Girl, Bacigalupi writes his dystopian futures so gritty and realistic, full of minor details and visceral descriptions, that you're easily pulled into this scorching heat of a dried up mad-max-esque hell where crime flourishes and everyone fights about the hottest commodity: water. The higher-ups send their killers after suddenly surfaced water-rights claims, while regular people need to work/fight/sell to receive the few cups of water for their everyday survival.

Constantly ready to be disappointed but instead, except for the twaddle of the sex scene, the novel stuck together very nicely. Believable scenarios, good pacing, kept me going with no problem. If you like your dystopian novel with a “yeah, I can really see that happening” then this is for you, but it comes along with a fair bit of violence and not many avenues to Hollywood endings.

I live New Mexico, my city depends on the Ogalalla Aquifer which is being depleted pretty quickly. It is estimated my city may “dry up” in the next 10-20 years. We are building a multi-million dollar pipeline from a lake to provide water once the Aquifer is depleted. Water rights are still a remnant of the frontier days, the idea being if you own the land, you own the water you can drill out of it. The Water Knife is this scenario on a large scale – Phoenix, Las Vegas, cities in Texas, and California all fighting for water. It's a little post-apocalyptic. Most Texans have left Texas. People in Phoenix are trying to escape.

Pacigalupi has penned a scary future without easy access to water.

Bacigalupi does a good post-apocalypse god-damn. this time the water is drying up tho and people are just as desperate and divided as The Wind-up Girl. if I had time to re-read things I would probably go for that right now...

“‘Like there's something in our DNA,' she murmured, ‘that makes us into monsters.'”

This book killed me. I feel like Paolo Bacigalupi took my heart in his hand and stabbed it about a dozen times. And it made me think. It makes you really step back and cringe at the human race as a whole, and as dire as that sounds, it's really an incredible feeling.

The characters were awesome. Really, I loved and hated them all with the same amount of passion. I especially adored Angel and Lucy, and they seemed real. Maria pissed me off, to be honest. Especially when she shot you-know-who. But anyways.

The plot was perfect. It was political- yay! And the politics surrounding the water were actually understandable, even to a simple citizen such as myself. It contained a mystery, and I can tell you the exact moment when I realized where the water rights were.

I loved it, if you couldn't somehow tell from my gushing review. Paolo Bacigalupi always makes me think. Always makes me think about how screwed up as a race we were. And I just love that.

“‘Yeah. And we're all the same monsters,' Angel said.”