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This is chock full of gratuitous violence and I recommend it to no one.
Bacigalupi has got some moralizing to do (have you read Cadillac Desert? Well, have you????? WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF WATER), and he’s also got some torture porn and some fantasizing to do. He likes his women tied up and needy. The women are helpless, the men save them. Did I mention that he’s into torture. More than one person is tortured in this book, and Bacigalupi is here to tell you all about it.
Here’s a sample - this is o ...more
Bacigalupi has got some moralizing to do (have you read Cadillac Desert? Well, have you????? WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF WATER), and he’s also got some torture porn and some fantasizing to do. He likes his women tied up and needy. The women are helpless, the men save them. Did I mention that he’s into torture. More than one person is tortured in this book, and Bacigalupi is here to tell you all about it.
Here’s a sample - this is o ...more
What a good, good book.
Bacigalupi takes a genre that can be hard to do well -- climate fiction, that near-future dystopia that tends to breed a lot of both preaching and a complete lack of faith in humanity -- and does it right. The Arizona of The Water Knife is recognizable and real; nothing feels far-fetched, from the socioeconomic situation to the religion to the tech to the characters. The characters are well-drawn; they're fleshed out and human and deeply understandable and relatable, even ...more
Bacigalupi takes a genre that can be hard to do well -- climate fiction, that near-future dystopia that tends to breed a lot of both preaching and a complete lack of faith in humanity -- and does it right. The Arizona of The Water Knife is recognizable and real; nothing feels far-fetched, from the socioeconomic situation to the religion to the tech to the characters. The characters are well-drawn; they're fleshed out and human and deeply understandable and relatable, even ...more
The Water Knife is a dystopian fiction set in the American South West in the near future, a place in the grip of a never ending drought, in which the most valuable resource is water and the rights to it, a resource which can determine the difference between a cities or states survival or its slow prolonged extinction. This is the story of a Vegas Water Knife (think mercenary specialising in stealing communities water), a reporter and a innocent refugee are all caught up in the search for a set o ...more
Stupid. If you want a crime novel, there are millions better. If you want to read about water scarcity, there are better, more informative avenues. You want dystopian? Orwell or McCarthy. There is no real reason to read this mish-mash between two covers. A waste of trees.
The thing that scares me about dystopian novels such as this is that the events therein seem as though they could really happen.
Nov 06, 2014
Beverly
marked it as to-read
Jan 14, 2015
Deedee
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Apr 29, 2015
Jayme Pendergraft
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May 28, 2015
Jessica
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Aug 22, 2015
Martha
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Nov 26, 2015
Brian
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Mar 31, 2016
Amy
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Aug 04, 2018
Rosemary
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Jun 23, 2019
Steph S
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Feb 09, 2022
Harvey
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Apr 08, 2023
Nikki Morse
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Jan 25, 2025
Anika
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Jun 26, 2025
Lori
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