“The wars of the next century will be about water.”
– Ismail Serageldin, former vice president of the World Bank (1999)
There’s no getting around it:
the premise of acclaimed media lawyer and novelist Cameron Stracher’s first
foray into young adult fiction – a dystopian thriller entitled The Water Wars –
is not so unlikely. In fact, more than a few people believe it’s inevitable.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world where decades of criminal environmental recklessness has caused the polar caps to melt and all of the planet’s freshwater lakes and rivers to dry up, a huge percentage of the world’s dispossessed population has already died from drought, starvation, disease and war. The Great Panic, as it was called, saw powerful governments collapse into chaos and smaller, more chaotic nations rise from their ashes. The United States of America is no more – now the superpower of North America is the evil Empire of Canada (yes, Canada is supposedly largely responsible for the “destroying” the environment!) and what is left of the States are now just a handful of inhospitable republics plagued by drought – Minnesota, Illinowa, Texas, etc.
“Where rivers once flowed, there were now only huge gashes like scars on the earth. Lakebeds had dried up, forming dust bowls that swirled with toxic chemicals and heavy metals. The ice and permafrost that covered the northern reaches had disappeared or been melted for water. The sea levels had risen, and salt water poisoned any underground aquifers that were not depleted from years of overuse. Rain fell, but in such torrents and violent storms that most of it washed into the ocean. The weather was unpredictable, and humans stole the clouds, sucking moisture from the sky and using it for their own purposes. Drought and death darkened the continents, and even the fittest could barely survive…”
The story revolves around Vera and Will, a 15-year old girl and her 17-year old brother who set out on a heroic quest to find and rescue their kidnapped friend Kai, an enigmatic boy who seems to know much more about the world than a normal boy should. Before disappearing with his father – who is a driller, a wildcatter, who knows the secrets of finding water far underneath the earth – Kai confides to Vera that he knows the location of a potentially world-altering secret river!
Completely unprepared for their journey to find their friend – and totally clueless to the dangers of the world outside their small town existence in Illinowa – the two kids are quickly captured by water pirates who take them forcibly across the republic border to Minnesota. From there things quickly go from bad to worse as they are caught in an act of terrorism from PELA (the People’s Environmental Liberation Army), sold into slavery, and targeted by a money-hungry global desalination company. But all the while, Vera and Will never give up hope of finding Kai – and witnessing firsthand his divine river…
While the review excerpt on
the cover of The Water Wars – “A rousing adventure story in the tradition of
The Hunger Games.” – will surely sell a boatload of books from readers who
loved the trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay) from Suzanne
Collins, the comparisons are only fair in sweeping generalities. Both
storylines are written for young adults and have dystopian settings but
Stracher’s narrative is decidedly thinner, more streamlined – that is not quite
the depth of character development and focus on world building that readers came
to cherish in the Collins novels.
For instance, the characters of Vera and Will – while adequately developed – were overshadowed by some fantastic peripheral characters, specifically Ulysses the “pirate king” and Sula, the butt-kicking warrioress who can fly anything.
But that said: the profound message of The Water Wars is what powers this book. It’s a cautionary tale of the highest magnitude, with a warning that is loud and clear: “There’s a bigger war about to happen…a world war… soon there will be only two sides: people with water, and those without. The next battle – the final battle – will be about who controls the spigot.”
The thematic impact of The Water Wars was just as intense and disturbing, if not more so, than the Hunger Games novels.
Readers of all ages should read this stark novel about greed and ignorance and apathy – a wonderful book to initiate discussions (in classrooms, between parents and their children, book clubs, etc.) about environmental stewardship and how the actions of one person can change the world for the better…
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
