City of Bones

With City of Bones, Wells shapes a fabled and mysterious Arabian Nights wonderland in which science and magic meet in a head-on clash. It is a place that has been devastated by an ancient holocaust, and where most of the world's water has evaporated.
But out of the ashes, a bizarre and wonderful civilization arises. Sand ships now traverse the routes once used by the great war galleons, and a glittering chain of city-states dot the Great Waste. And greatest of them all is Charisat.
A beautiful woman and a handsome thief try to unravel the mysteries of an age-old technology to stop a fanatical cult before its members unleash an evil that will topple Charisat.
And destroy all the water in the world.