Hugo Award winner Jason Heller said "Bacigalupi plays on a grand scale, but he does so with a keen eye for detail. His big triumph, though, is never forgetting that The Water Knife is a thriller at its pounding heart. Even amid reams of deeply researched information about the economy, geology, history and politics of water rights and usage in the United States, he keeps the plot taut and the dialogue slashing".[4]
The Denver Post called the novel a "blockbuster" writing "this is a rich and, yes, gritty world from a smart author who knows the American Southwest well and knows readers better".[5]
American crime novelist and editor Denise Hamilton, writing in the Los Angeles Times, said that the book brought to mind the movie Chinatown, saying that while "one is set in the past and the other in a dystopian future, both are neo-noir tales with jaded antiheroes and ruthless kingpins who wield water as lethal weapons to control life - and mete out death. Bacigalupi weaves an engrossing tale all his own, crackling with edgy style...and he makes water politics sexy, laying down the jargon and technical details early, then hurrying back to the action-filled streets...the ultimate villains here aren't the hired assassins or lowly water engineers but the faceless corporate owners who play God, deciding if entire regions live or die".[3]
