The Water Knife

The Water Knife, a sci-fi thriller written by Paolo Bacigalupi, presents a dystopian world that is disturbing in its verisimilitude. The novel, however, is ultimately dragged down by shallow main characters, having to resort to shock value to hold our attention.

The story is built around three main points of view: there’s the journalist Lucy, who needs to find out the story behind the murder of a dear friend; there’s a young woman, Maria, who wants to leave the militia-controlled area where she lives in; and the water knife, Angel, a mercenary hired by private companies to “cut” and divert water from certain regions.

The world of The Water Knife is set in a not-too-distant future, where water has become so scarce that the act of taking a bath is seen as ostentatious. The United States has also become fragmented, with its federalization weakened by the frequent struggles among its states for rights over rivers and other water sources: those who lose those rights, after all, doom their people to complete misery and despair. Prejudice, therefore, flourishes against members of certain states, with “Texans,” for example, becoming a pejorative term.

Bacigalupi is not subtle when working with these elements. The setting is by itself already a warning about our environmental problems and global warming, but the characters still feel the need to voice what it all means at every chance they get, often lamenting how they never believed things would get this bad. Sometimes, the warning gives birth to some inspired dialogues, such as when a character points out the oxymoronic problem of people treating science exactly as they treat religion (“If I could put my finger on the moment we genuinely fucked ourselves, it was the moment we decided that data was something you could use words like believe or disbelieve around,” a character says). But most of the time, it’s not just blunt but also pretty repetitive, which can make the narrative feel preachy.

In this turbulent environment, dominated by large corporations that control the water – this particular dystopia wouldn’t exist if water wasn’t privatized –, Lucy tries to investigate the murder of her friend. She seeks the truth above all else, including her own safety, but this is all she amounts to. “She didn’t want safety. She wanted truth,” the narrator explains, as if it wasn’t clear to us before. The novel is also packed with shocking events and situations: rape, mutilation, physical and psychological torture are common elements in the plot and make up most of what happens to the three main characters, especially Maria.

While Lucy and Angel quickly come across each other during their private investigations, Maria’s storyline remains isolated for most of the book, being structured around suffering and the gradual loss of hope. Living under the rule of the militia, the young woman discovers that their government is bound to become increasingly violent and overwhelming. She must escape them but doesn’t know how. Her antagonists are compared to hyenas in one of the best and most atmospheric chapters of the book, being depicted as domineering beasts preying for their next victim, while their leader is described as a demon. Such comparisons are repeated often, however, which diminishes their impact.

Angel, meanwhile, is just a mercenary that never goes beyond the trope of the tough guy with a coarse voice. He’s is marked by violence, but is capable of occasional moments of kindness towards people he considers innocent. You probably know the type from countless other stories.

In other words, the characters in The Water Knife are not that fascinating. And to make matters worse, they have virtually no narrative arc to speak of and barely have any agency as well, being tossed back and forth by the events – which works only in Maria’s plotline as it reinforces the feeling that her escape from the militia’s grasp is impossible.

The main investigation doesn’t hold many surprises either, working with very few elements, which makes it easy for us to predict its few twists and turns. The ending is consistent with the main themes of the story, however, building on the hatred and capitalist greed that led humanity to destroy their world.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out the problem of having a rape scene and a sex scene in consecutive chapters. The problem lies in the fact that the sex scene in question is basically a male domination fantasy, with the woman getting aroused by looking at the guy’s firearm and scars and almost orgasming without him having to do anything, totally surrendering herself to his power. Since this scene is structurally glued to rape, it stops being just silly and starts leaving a bad taste in your mouth.

The Water Knife is a dystopian novel that can leave an impression on the reader because of its subject matter. The execution, however, is lackluster, with the novel being marred by uninteresting characters and problematic scenes.

April 08, 2021.

Review originally published in Portuguese on October 26, 2018.