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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 someplace to escape as soon as possible. Calling this a horror novel would not be far from the mark. Bacigalupi's language is like a scalpel, cutting a thousand precise slices into humanity. Even more than his solid effort to examine the human consequences of environmental destruction in The Windup Girl, here Bacigalupi conjures a vision of the Southwest that feels just moments away. A few sections that deal with character relationships fall flat, but he writes at his best when he shows just what people will do to survive the unsurvivable. A content warning: There's some detailed depiction of torture, in case that's an issue for readers. For my money though, the most stomach-turning part of the book was how factual and urgent it all feels.