How Bad Could Things Get? Chris McKinney's WATER CITY Trilogy Tests the Answers

Climate collapse, floods and fires, political divisions, wars and devastation—in America, it's not uncommon for people to feel like it's going to take a great leader to get us safely out of these very hard times.

But that's not where Chris McKinney heads in his WATER CITY trilogy. After the earlier Midnight, Water City and then Eventide, Water City, where a synesthetic former detective's been tackling the crushing issues around him in an effort to save his too-talented daughter from being coopted, McKinney and Soho Press collaborate to move rapidly into the last volume: SUNSET, WATER CITY. 

In a radical switch from the nameless not-quite-hero of the first two books, the third one (set in the year 2160) spins from the point of view of that talented daughter, Ascalon, whose experience at age 19 includes both armed resistance and a lot of forms of tech destruction. Battling both her US neighbors in the toxic lands of the Great Leachate, and the overwhelming technological dominance of the near-deity Akira Kimura, Ascalon's courage and defiance take root in her anger at her father, as well as her love for her vanishing family.

As I read SUNSET, WATER CITY a second time, I thought a lot about trilogies. The one I grew up with was The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien); then there's the Hunger Games trilogy. But also there's a trilogy at the start of Ursula Leguin's Wizard of Earthsea books: A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972). And I'm one volume into reading Cixin Xiu's formidable Chinese space trilogy right now.

On reflection, I wonder whether world-building requires a bigger canvas than a single book. Building the pressure points needs to extend beyond that first volume, and the most intriguing and memorable characters, whether heroic (Frodo, Katniss) or antiheroic (Ascalon's father and Akira Kimura herself), need years to mature and deepen, in order to provide a meaningful resolution to another world's issues. And maybe that's especially true when, as with McKinney's trilogy, the issues are so clearly unsolved in our own present time: environment, antagonism, excessive power.

So my second reading of SUNSET, WATER CITY looked for how McKinney (who by the way is a native Hawai'ian with ethnic threads that are Korean, Chinese, and Scottish) asserted the solutions to the trilogy, not just to one book. What I found is that this third volume is as much a statement of human value as it is an adventure. Ascalon asks herself, "It this what it always is to be with other people? To not understand each other? To harbor trauma? To bottle anxiety, probe, and flinch before another even responds? I feel lost." When she decides to tackle the bigger issues of her world, she's aware that it's also an escape from this inner lack of certainty; "I will try to bury my grief and rage for now. I will try to fix this. I will take my father and Jon6J to Ascalon Lee. It's time to return to Water City."

A return to Water City demands unusual physical capacities, and many will feel especially strange to "mainlanders" reading the series -- but less so to those who live with islands and oceans. Over time, the presence of this trilogy and the inevitable film versions to follow may bring Ascalon's adaptations to some level of expected adaptation, like Frodo's interaction with the Ring. But expect a first reading to feel uncomfortable; expect to utilize your capacity to "listen" and to "suspend disbelief." Ascalon's discoveries, at first framed in her perceptions of her father, are worth reaching: "He should've known that it's impossible to sleep to the future to change the future. One needs to be awake to change that."

Without spoiling the plot, I can say that Ascalon clarifies her own motives as she battles for what she feels is right. Unlike the three leaders around her -- her father, her mentor Ascalon Lee, and the overwhelming Akira Kimura -- this young woman intends to protect her world, if she can just figure out which elements of it merit that protection.

In a time of chaos and pain, it may seem counterproductive to dip into a trilogy that proposes that Earth's issues are so extreme that only interplanetary settlement and technological unity will pull us through. But McKinney's narrative is so compelling that it's well worth entering his speculative world and his painfully maturing protagonists. Besides ... isn't it time, after so many decades, to step beyond Frodo and Gandalf's solution for Middle Earth?

[For some extra insight from the author, look here: https://www.watercitytrilogy.com/building-water-city.]

This Strange and Exquisite World

Red eft, courtesy of Vermont Fish and Wildlife.

It's good to have "city" company hanging around -- someone who is as astounded by the greenery and the explosions of blossoms as I was when I began garden-tending in Vermont. These many years later, I am still daily astounded, but in different ways: I see things with fresh eyes on the best days, honoring that joy that seems to link our eyes, breath, mind, and soul together. But I also look harder, with questions.

In the past week or two I've indulged in evening walks. They are by definition very different from morning ones: The light is fading instead of brightening, the breeze quiets to a whisper, stars begin to show up in the darker segments of the sky. This week there's the arc of a waxing (growing) moon, too; when it's full, we'll start the countdown of another month left before we have to watch for early frosts. But not yet.

Still, the evenings can be chilly here on the mountain ridge. I saw a skunk hump across the road two nights ago, fur fluffed up for warmth. It crossed where I saw the porcupine last week. With this year's questions and hypotheses, I make a guess that the marshy area that lies on both sides of this stretch of road is more than a deer path (I've seen their tracks, no need to guess that part), is also -- maybe because its vegetation is low and soft -- a path for other mammals.

The chill of the evening caused one "crossing creature" to be stranded on the cold road a few evenings ago. Its bright red skin and delicate limbs fascinated me. Definitely a red eft, the juvenile stage of the Eastern spotted newt. Without enough air or land warmth, and without the ability to make its own, the creature stood still, about a quarter of the way across the road. Car alert! Hazardous crossing!

Well, of course talking to it wasn't any use. I tenderly lifted it onto my palm -- the warmth turned the eft into a lively squirming tangle of legs and tail almost immediately, and I had to hurry across the road to release it before my fingers -- so much larger than its limbs! -- would damage it. It immediately hurried into the greenery, vanishing at once. Then I finished my walk, happy to have seen something that so rarely crossed paths with me.

This week I also read the novel BORNE by Jeff VanderMeer. It's a dystopian novel, set on a world or part of a world where an inventive "Company" has destroyed natural life and seeded the terrain with "biotechs" that can be very threatening and smart. The protagonist, Rachel, sets a new pattern in motion when she gives maternal attention to a bit of tech-made flesh that she takes home -- something that was clinging to the fur of a monster, and which becomes her pet, or her child ... she has "borne" it, and names it "Borne."

The powerful thread that ties the characters and their perils together in BORNE is a question: What is a person? If you love some creature, and it loves you in return, does it have personhood?

(I hasten to say the book does not appear to be indicating anything about the age of personhood for a human fetus or baby.)

Rachel, her friend Wick, and Borne become the testers of their world, determining whether compassionate survival is possible. I like the book; I'd recommend it to anyone curious and questioning and willing to suspend disbelief in what the future of Earth could be. Age 10 and up, I think. It will mean more to adults -- and to those who've read other dystopian novels -- but the tenderness and kindness embodied in VanderMeer's world, page after page, fit the book for skilled younger readers as well. I'm glad it was on that list of "7 Books to Read After ..." (see my earlier post).

Yes, this is how I feed the source of All Good Writing. By reading, exploring, and asking questions. Hope you have a few minutes to explore the rest of this writer's blog.