It takes place in the near future, where drought brought on by climate change has devastated the Southwestern United States.

[3] In a review published by NPR, Hugo Award winning writer Jason Heller says "Bacigalupi plays on a grand scale, but he does so with a keen eye for detail.

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] In his review for The Denver Post, Dave Burdick says the novel a has a "rich" and "gritty" world, and comments that Bacigalupi knows the American Southwest well.

[5] American crime novelist and editor Denise Hamilton, writing in the Los Angeles Times, compares the novel to the film Chinatown, and says 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".