The Language of Water

Clark-Stern (Soul Stories) deploys setting and description with vibrant economy in this near-future cli-fi dystopia, but character and worldbuilding fare less well. Surrounded by old-school patriarchy, which the world has reverted to by 2100, the heroines—Sara, a starry-eyed Kurdish adolescent; Ruqia, a hard-bitten rebel commander; Kethuda, a Turkish politician and autocrat’s daughter; and Gai, her Kenyan servant in touch with ancient wisdom—are fairy tale simplifications. Turkey controls the limited water supply for what remains of the drought-stricken Middle East. Sara and Ruqia poach from this well while Kethuda nominally controls the trade contracts for it, but is undermined at every turn by powerful men. The rationale for why their society looks this way is unfortunately lacking. What happened to spur the universal reversion to extreme patriarchy? What became of climate-change mitigation technologies? Without connection to the known, this blasted world is like a CGI backdrop: momentarily stunning but easily parsed as artifice. Clark-Stern’s hand-waving extends throughout the plot; her true focus is on exploring the evolution of feminine power through a loosely connected series of Jungian imagery. At such a rarefied level of abstraction, the story is what suffers. (May)