The Water Knife
- 384
- Pages
- about 7 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“The Water Knife” is a thriller about the fight for water in a drought-stricken American Southwest, with an uncomfortably plausible near future. Bacigalupi keeps the pace up and the action coming, and most readers remark on how close his world stays to the present. Some readers find the book brutal and heavy, with its share of violence and no comforting way out.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Water Knife is a 2015 science fiction novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. It is Bacigalupi's sixth novel, and is based on his short story, The Tamarisk Hunter, first published in the news magazine High Country News. It takes place in the near future, where drought brought on by climate change has devastated the Southwestern United States.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.6 across 180 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 55% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.7 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.3 | 20 | 11% |
| Hardcover | 7.7 | 160 | 89% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Water Knife?
It has 384 pages — shorter than 65% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 7.7, the closest to this book.
