The Water Knife

Description

WATER IS POWER The American Southwest has been decimated by drought, Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches. When rumours of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez is sent to investigate. With a wallet full of identities and a tricked-out Tesla, Angel arrows south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. There, Angel encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist who knows far more about Phoenix's water secrets than she admits, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant who dreams of escaping north to those places where water still falls from the sky. As bodies begin to pile up and bullets start flying, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger, more corrupt, and dirtier than any of them could have imagined. With Phoenix teetering on the verge of collapse and time running out, their only hope for survival rests in one another's hands. But 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.

Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl was one of the most celebrated SF debuts of all time, winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Following a number of award-winning novels for younger readers, The Water Knife marks his return to adult fiction. He is a New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist, and lives in Colorado with his wife and son.

This is the best kind of science fiction. An intense thriller and a deeply insightful vision of the coming century, laid out in all its pain and glory. It's a water knife indeed, right to the heart Anyone can write about the future. Paolo Bacigalupi writes about the future that we're making today, if we keep going the way we are. It makes his writing beautiful . . . and terrifying These days are coming, and as always fiction explains them better than fact. This is a spectacular thriller, wonderfully imagined and written, and racing through it will make you think - and make you thirsty - Lee Child The Water Knife is a noir-tinged, apocalyptic vision of the near-future: What will the world be like, and how will we live in it? Bacigalupi already seems to live there. Once I started, I couldn't put it down - Kelly Link Bacigalupi is a worthy successor to William Gibson - Time