(Review) The Water Wars

TITLE: The Water Wars
AUTHOR: Cameron Stracher
PUB DATE: January 2011
PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Fire
PAGES: 240

SOURCE: Received this from the publisher

Synopsis from publisher’s site:
Would you risk everything for someone you just met?

What if he had a secret worth killing for?

Welcome to a future where water is more precious than oil or gold…

Hundreds of millions of people have already died, and millions more will soon fall—victims of disease, hunger, and dehydration. It is a time of drought and war. The rivers have dried up, the polar caps have melted, and drinkable water is now in the hands of the powerful few. There are fines for wasting it and prison sentences for exceeding the quotas.

But Kai didn’t seem to care about any of this. He stood in the open road drinking water from a plastic cup, then spilled the remaining drops into the dirt. He didn’t go to school, and he traveled with armed guards. Kai claimed he knew a secret—something the government is keeping from us…

And then he was gone. Vanished in the middle of the night. Was he kidnapped? Did he flee? Is he alive or dead? There are no clues, only questions. And no one can guess the lengths to which they will go to keep him silent. We have to find him—and the truth—before it is too late for all of us.

MY THOUGHTS:
I have to start off firstly by saying that I absolutely love the cover for this book. I think right now its my favorite cover of 2011. The people at Sourcebooks did a fantastic job with the cover.

When I first heard about this book I thought that Cameron was a debut author but he’s not. This is actually his debut YA book. This is his fourth book. The previous three books were adult books.

Over the past year I have developed a taste for YA dystopia books and honestly I haven’t read alot.

As I was reading this I wondered how far off this book could really be from the future? We all know that the environment is changing and we see it all the time from the drastic weather happening all over the world. What will the next 50 years be like? Will we have this drastic weather, what about water?

Water is something we take for granted and don’t realize how important it is until we don’t have it. This past year I actually grew to appreciate how important it was when a water main broke on our street and we were without running water for several days.

Okay back to my review. When you first open the book there is a new map of North America and its divided with new names. Canada is called the Empire of Canad, Artic Archepelago, Island of Greenland, and the United States is now divided into eight regions called California, Dakotas, Arizona, Repulic of Texas, Republic of Louisiana, The Great Coast, Republic of Illinowa and Republic of Minnesota.

The Empire of Canada is the big old bad enemy and we are apparently at war over what is left of the water along with every other nation that is left. The ice caps have all melted into the ocean and there is no more Niagra Falls.

The story takes place in the Republic of Illinowa. The people who are left are forces to drink unhealthy water that is distributed through the governments Water Board Authority (WBA). People are getting sick from desalinated water. Which is really just seawater with all kinds of chemicals.

Vera and Will attend school (if you could really call it that. It seemed like they were being brain washed) and they have to work on the water team. One day will Vera is waiting for the bus she sees Kia. Kia isn’t like the regular people of the state he is different. He doesn’t go to school because his father is a rich driller. Vera can see this because he lives with guards and drinks fresh water. I quickly realized that there was more to Kia and was curious to find out what it was.

When Kia tells Vera that he knows where fresh water is. Vera is intrigued by Kia and quickly finds ways to spend time with him. Kia goes against everything that she was taught. Then suddenly Kia and his father are kidnapped and thanks to Vera she is the one to put it together. They both decide that they need to rescue Kia and his dad.

I really enjoyed how Cameron told the story about how the water was the hottest commodity out there and just how much people in authority would go to keep what was left sacred. It was about half way when the action picked up. There were pirates, bombs, gun fire, and so much more that you had to read to find out if Vera and Will would survive and get to Kia in time or will it be too late?

I wasn’t sure at the beginning and put the book down several times with no problem but then once I got to the middle I had a hard time to put it down and managed to read it in two days. There was so much going on action wise that I had to keep reading.

I couldn’t find a website for the author but i did find this Blog Talk Radio interview. The host is Brandon and the show is called
Brandon’s buzz Interview with Cameron

There is no trailer for the book but I did find this: