Review: The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher

Synopsis from Goodreads:

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.


Review (with some spoilers):

I wanted to read The Water Wars because of the environmental issues that I knew it would focus on. I wanted to see how people would survive in a world where water is hard to come by. I've seen Water World and enjoyed it.

The cover was interesting and piqued my curiosity. However, the cover is less to do with the character is depicts (Kai) and more to do with the two main characters, Vera and Will, siblings who go on a perilous journey to find him. Though Kai is spoken about a lot in the story, he isn't present as much as I would have liked him to be.

The story opened well. I was able to form a picture of the world Vera and Will inhabited and noted the stark contrast between their lack of water and their access to some sorts of technology and even a gaming centre. I wished Stracher would have given more details on how they lived without water. How did they wash their clothes? What exactly is a 'dry shower'? How do they wash utensils?

They went to school and lived with their parents and one day, Vera makes a friend at the bus stop; Kai. Kai and Vera became friends a little too quickly. In truth, they should have been more wary of eah other, Vera especially due to all the warnings from her dad. 

A month goes past. I think this month should have been explained more. What happened? It was crucial for the development of the characters. Later, Kai tells Vera of a river's existence, which is unheard of in this dystopian world. Vera tells Will and when they go to Kai's apartment to ask him to show it to them the next day, they see the signs of a struggle, a kidnap, and a dead body in the room.

Vera wants to rescue Kai and after some persuasion, Will helps her. At this point, the story speeds up rapidly. Knowing that they and their parents could be in danger, they leave their parents ignorant of what's going on and go off to find Kai based on little to no evidence and a hunch. It turns out that these hunches kept cropping up as the story went on. Vera would always think of another place to try to find Kai and she somehow knew what most of their captors' motives were.

It was a little too convenient when Vera and Will were always captured or rescued just in the nick of time. Most often, others saved them rather than them saving themselves. Another criticism is that the story felt too sketchy. There was a lot of action but the story wasn't detailed enough. It felt as though Vera and Will were swept along in the action, journeying from one place to another without much sense of direction.

There were too many baddies and organisations for me to keep track of. Whilst reading, I couldn't remember what some of the acronyms stood for, such as PELA and WAB. Additionally, there were the Minnesotans, the Illinowas (Illinois and Iowa, I believe), the water pirates and Bluewater. This meant that there were too many characters that weren't developed; ranging from Kai who was introduced early on in the story to Torq, who appears at the end. Characters disappeared quickly from the story and others were introduced hastily, such as Sula.  

Sula conveniently turned up in the story just when Vera and Will needed her and it wasn't believable at all. I couldn't understand why some of the characters who appeared to be 'bad' at the start helped the two main characters, for example, Ulysses. There was a reason for him helping Vera and Will, but overall, some of these characters didn't have strong enough reasons to risk their lives for them in my opinion.

Other things that peeved me was the way Vera would hurriedly drop in a layer of information, which I was surprised she knew. She was very well informed all the time, even though I'm sure they wouldn't have taught her all that at school. Furthermore, the story felt very unrealistic whenever Vera mouthed off to the people who captured her. These baddies had guns, she was at their mercy, yet she just never seemed very scared.

What strengthens this feeling is that some of the dialogue wasn't that good. For example, Nasri had lines such as 'That's for me to know and for you to find out' and in response to Will's claim that he 'won't get away with this', Nasri answers 'But I will.' This use of cliche dialogue didn't help the story.

Whilst some of the characters were 2D, others like Nasri, were caricatures. There was constant description of him hopping from foot to foot and I was offered no explanation as to why that was. Had something happened to him? Was it a habit?

The political aspect of the story was far too complex to explain in this somewhat short book. In the end, everything was sorted out too easily. Perhaps Stracher was trying to make The Water Wars into an epic journey, much like the original Ulysses (Odysseus) that the character in The Water Wars is named after, however I don't believe Stracher achieved this.  The story would have been more interesting if Kai had been at the forefront more and if we had learnt more about his ability.

However, The Water Wars does offer some interesting insight as to what would happen in the world if water became so precious and rare as to start a war over it. Vera and Will did think for themselves and did try to find out what was going on and to find Kai. While it wasn't the most engrossing dystopian story out there, it does offer some food for thought.

I would recommend The Water Wars to readers who are interested in and enjoy reading about environmental issues, dystopian societies and adventure. I don't agree with the comparison of this to the Hunger Games as they are completely different. Overall, Vera and Will were likeable characters and their story is worth a read. Another book to try would be Dark Life by Kat Falls.

Rating: 3/5

Concept: 4/5
Cover: 4.5/5
Author: Cameron Stracher


This review is part of Dystopian February at Presenting Lenore.