Vera lives in a world where everyone is perpetually thirsty
and perpetually at war. The United States has been broken
up into a number of smaller countries in the wake of
the "Great Panic," and it is expected that, when they finish
school, all boys will go into the army. Canada is the bad
guy in this scenario, having committed environmental
atrocities and blocked access to fresh water to areas south
of it, including Illinowa, where Vera and her brother Will
live. Then Vera meets Kai, a boy who seems to always have
enough water to drink. He promises her that one day he will
show her a secret river. But before he can make good on his
promise, he disappears. When the siblings visit Kai's home
and find his bodyguard murdered, Vera and her brother feel
desperate to find Kai both for his own sake and for the hope
of water.
On pedicycles, the two set off into a landscape filled with
pirates, slavers, and corruption. Though the focus is on
the dystopian ideas and the world building, there's enough
action in THE WATER WARS to keep even reluctant readers
turning pages. The siblings are captured by, and
subsequently escape from, a number of factions, often
involving a speedy getaway and a burst of gunplay.
Stracher, who is also a journalist and law professor,
presents a world that sounds just a little familiar to our
own in the most frightening ways, with manufactured near-
food (seemingly based on soy) and (one must assume
genetically modified) "synth-fruit and quasi-vocados" being
the foods the masses can afford to buy. This brings home
Stracher's message that water is the most precious
resource, because without it, no one can grow crops or
raise livestock.
Make sure that when you sit down to read this one, that you
have a good supply of water nearby. It could make you a
little thirsty.
Welcome to a future where water is more precious
than gold or oil-and worth killing for
Vera and
her brother Will live in the shadow of the Great Panic, in a
country that has collapsed from environmental catastrophe.
Water is hoarded by governments, rivers are dammed, and
clouds are sucked from the sky. But then Vera befriends Kai,
who seems to have limitless access to fresh water. When Kai
suddenly disappears, Vera and Will set off on a dangerous
journey in search of him-pursued by pirates, a paramilitary
group, and greedy corporations. Timely and eerily familiar,
acclaimed author Cameron Stracher makes a stunning YA debut
that's impossible to forget. "Let us pray that the world
which Cameron Stracher has invented in The Water Wars
is testament solely to his pure, wild, and brilliant
imagination, and not his ability to see the future. I was
parched just reading it."-Laurie David, academy award
winning producer of An Inconvenient Truth, and author
of The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming
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