Pahlaniuk?
I really wanted to check his books, I didn't even buy Fight Club, although I have both Japan and US editions of the DVDs. I look at the books, flick through them, read bits, decide that I really don't want to buy them. His voice track on the Fight Club's commentary track is almost as irritating as the fawning interplay between Norton and Pitt in the same commentary.
He is also, of course, from a cult background, not a million miles removed from Scientology. Not that that is a crime, but it is certainly off-putting.
Bacigalupi, I love some of his stories. Many are too horrible to love, but they are affecting, even very depressing at times, all too likely, if we can fuck up badly enough.
This novel, I would guess, draws on his short fiction on the same theme (SW USA drought, extreme measures for water control). I liked those stories (only read two of them, and it was the Straw, not the Knife).
However, and not the first time I have said this, my favourite by Mr. Bacigalupi is Pump Six, it is doomy but very funny, in the collection 'Pump Six and Other Stories', you will find a very broad taster, including, IIRC, tales leading up to the novel in the article.
I was stupid enough to buy his 'The Drowned Cities' without reading the jacket notes last year. A YA effort, it is not as sickening as many others, no worse, than, say, similar efforts by Vernon Vinge (a shockingly bad writer for one with such fame).
Easy reading, but nothing I would want to re-read it for, whatever happened to writing of a quality that would attract everyone from the literate child to the imaginative adult?
So-called YA fiction is usually a propagandistic crime against literature. Pooter as the best example.
Funny how many adults who pretend to be literate were panting for the Pooter books.
Penultimate point, Miss Croatia may have crafted a lovely fantasy of her people's victimhood, but it is likely false, all of the attacks rained on rump Yugoslavia (Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia)
FFS, the KLA is *known* to have run live organ transplants from captured Serbs, just as Germany and the USA are *known* to have supported Croatia with mercenaries who liked to deck their tents out with Third Reich 'n' Roll regalia.
May be the appealing tale, I prefer to avoid a seemingly charming fabric of lies.
I would recommend Pump Six to any reading Regtard.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
