Chris McKinney Books In Order

Publication Order of Water City Books

Publication Order of ChrisMcKinney Standalone Novels

Chris McKinney is an American author born in Honolulu best known for the “Water City” trilogy.

“Midnight, Water City,” the debut novel of the series was a “CrimeReads” Best Speculative Mystery of 2021 and a “Publishers Weekly” Best Mystery of 2021.
He has also been a recipient of starred reviews from “Publishers Weekly” and the works have received critical acclaim from many reviewers.

In addition to the trilogy, he has also penned several single-standing novels including his debut work “The Tattoo,” which he published in 2019.

In 2011, Chris McKinney was appointed a University of Hawaii Visting Distinguished Writer. Over the years, he has won several awards including seven Kapalapala Pookela Awards and one Elliot Cades Award.
He currently makes his home in Honolulu, where he lives with his wife and two daughters.

McKinney grew up in rural Hawaii, one block away from the beach. Growing up in Hawaii, some of his favorite memories include crabbing, spearfishing, and trolling the reefs.

Kahalu’u his neighborhood was for the most part populated by Native Hawaiians and had a lot of economic inequity. As such, both socioeconomic class and the ocean have often informed his writing.

As a child in rural Hawaii, he found it a bizarre place as it melded hyper-macho Japanese and Hawaiian culture where he learned how to dive, hunt, fish, and fight as male rites of passage.
There are all manner of country music, guns, bushcraft, drugs, MMA, and 4X4 trucks, making it the only place in the world full of rednecks of color.

This was the place he wrote about for years and almost sold his version to Hollywood a few times. When he failed to sell his works, he proceeded to write and co-executive produce a low-budget indie film about his homeland in 2017.
While shooting the film, he had to pilot a flat-bottomed skiff through the channels, and it occurred to him that he no longer knew where the safe channels were.

After spending several years away from Hawaii, he realized how out of touch he was and that he was no longer the best person to tell the story.

Thereafter, Chris McKinney turned to science fiction and it was while he was spending time on the “Big Island” that he developed the concept of the “Water City” trilogy.

Driving from Hilo to Waimea which is a relatively long drive for Hawaiians, he used to pass the Mauna Kea telescopes and thought long and hard about the protests against building on the mountain which many believed was sacred.
Perhaps an entire culture was at stake and it was from this that he started visualizing what would remain of the island if the sacred mountain was no more.

Chris also spent time west of Mauna Kea on the Kohala Coast and loved exploring the deep drops from land to deep sea on that side.

He also began thinking of how much exploration of the sea remains to be done and this is when he began imagining underwater cities.

He started creating a future with a lead who had to deal with addiction, divorce fatherhood, and many other difficulties in life just like him.

While writing his novels he has come to love learning which is a side effect of his research into his novels. While writing Midnight, Water City, he learned a lot about astrophysics, marine biology, religion, and neuroscience.
It was also during this time that he began writing novels in crime and noir fiction with settings closer to home. Despite his shift, themes of class and the ocean continued to be at the center of his work.

“Midnight, Water City” is a brilliant new entry in the “Water City” trilogy by Chris McKinney.

The work is an exploration of the dark past of a murdered scientist from the perspective of a man who once upon a time was engaged in unspeakable crimes in her name.
The novel is set in 2142, about four decades after Earth nearly missed a collision with “Sessho-Seki” the massive asteroid.

The scientist Akira Akimura who came up with the strategy for dealing with the asteroid collision threat has become a celebrity and has almost been deified.

However, she feels she is no longer safe and after years in the shadows, she reaches out to a police detective who was once her former head of security.

Upon arriving at her home in the deep sea, he finds that Akira has been dismembered methodically. Deeply pained, he will do anything including risk his family, his career, and his own life, as digs into the past to find her killer.
With a cinematic, rich voice full of cynicism, the novel is a shocking exploration of the cult of personality, research, climate change, class, and the dark sacrifices that we often have to make so that humanity can move forward.

Chris McKinney’s novel “Eventide, Water City” is a futuristic combination of horror, noir, thriller, and adventure fiction exploring how we might just experience dystopia in the near future.
The novel is set in 2150 nearly a decade following the murder of the renowned scientist Akira Kimura.

The detective who has once done everything to find her killer is now a stay-at-home father, who sometimes works as a bounty hunter, while his wife is rising ever higher in the Police Department in Water City.
But the city comes under threat when the permanent mark known as “Ascalons Scar” following the elimination of the asteroid goes missing, and someone everyone believed was dead comes back seeking vengeance from humanity.
What follows is a wild journey as the lead travels from Osaka to the moon and back in an attempt to ensure that humanity does not go extinct.

It is also a novel exploring climate change, class, technology, and the lengths people will go to to protect their loved ones.

In “Sunset, Water City,” parenthood, faith, power, and technology clash to make for an epic ending to “The Water City Trilogy.”

The novel is set in 2160 a decade following the events of the second novel in the series. At the opening of the novel, 99.97 percent of humanity had either been wiped out or possessed by Earth’s former savior and renowned scientist Akira Kimura.
The former detective who is the antihero works with Ascalon his daughter as they live in a post-apocalyptic world full of barbaric Zeroes who have refused to let go of the old world ways.

They live in direct opposition to Akira and will not allow her to convert them into zombie-like humans she calls her “Gardeners.”

Ascalon who is now nineteen is the lead in this story since her father is dealing with grief after decades of being manipulated by Akira. It is now up to Ascalon to find a way of saving what remains of humanity.