The Water Knife

Paolo Bacigalupi

May 2015 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A "fresh, genre-bending thriller” (Los Angeles Times) set in the near future when water is scarce and a spy, a hardened journalist and a young Texas migrant find themselves pawns in a corrupt game.

"Think Chinatown meets Mad Max." NPR, All Things Considered

In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to pile up, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger and more corrupt than they could have imagined, and 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.

Ratings and reviews

Another impeccable immersion into a likely future, Bacigalupi does his "The Windup Girl" one better. Superbly written, fast-paced, and unapologetically brutal. Expect to see on 2015's Hugo and Nebula lists.

Fast read, which sucks you in quickly. The excitement starts within the first few chapters and continues all the way through to the end. Great anti-hero and wonderful strong heroines.

Exquisite work! A gut-believable near-future. Our world parched, mostly broken, pre-apocalypse. A cast of characters who share one key thing... They're all fundamentally driven by their human impulses, drives, desires, fears. All of them with their stories. And I want to meet them, to have them live out their destinies. I feel privileged to have been let into their existences. This author is a maestro.

About the author

PAOLO BACIGALUPI is a Hugo, Nebula, and Michael L. Printz Award winner, as well as a National Book Award finalist. He is also a winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the John W. Campbell Award, and a three-time winner of the Locus Award. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and High Country News. He lives with his wife and son in western Colorado, where he is working on a new novel.
 
www.windupstories.com