Water Witch

Rating:
Summary: Very entertaining, memorable.
Review: I read this book some years ago and enjoyed it. I lost my copy and have been looking for another one ever since.

Rating:
Summary: A perfect airline book
Review: Water Witch isn't big literature, but it provides an enjoyable few hours in another universe. Initially, the book gives you the impression that this will be fluffy entertainment, but it delivers much more. You bite into cotton candy and find, say, a lemon meringue pie. Just a *little* more depth than you'd expected.

The story is fairly simple, but it would be easy to spoil the plot; forgive me if I'm circumspect. Basically, Water Witch takes place on a planet, long since settled by humans, where water is rare; only a water witch -- someone who's genetically sensitive to water and can feel its presence -- can control the precious resource. However, of the water witches have died out and the current princess, as you learn in the first few pages, doesn't have very much talent. Despite the short-of-water theme, it's definitely not a Dune knockoff, as the alien planet has several well thought out ecological resources.

The story is told from two viewpoints: Deza, the daughter of a con man, and Radi, who's engaged to the last princess of the Red City. Naturally the whole thing is a setup for a love story, and it doesn't disappoint.

All of the above makes this sound like a very serious novel, but it's a done with a light hand and a sense of humor. The humor of real people rather than silliness or laugh-out-loud escapades.

While the story doesn't have the interwoven zanyness that Willis accomplishes so well in her later work (which always makes me think of Katherine Hepburn movies like Bringing Up Baby), it does show signs of her development. The authors do a fine job of storytelling (sometimes you can tell whose hand was on the keyboard, so to speak, but it's rare), with more complex characters than in at least another one of their collaborations.

I enjoyed this book, and think it'd be a fine accompaniment on a long trip.