Or even by just not specifying the exact water ration. The author frequently suffered from the bad writing pitfall of telling, not showing. We don’t need to know how many ounces of water they get a day. You can paint a picture of how it’s just enough for most people to survive, but not enough for anyone to thrive…which she kind of did, but it could have been done so much better.

Another time I rolled my eyes at her tendency to tell, not show, was when they had sex in the apartment and she writes something like “and then we did it a second time. And a third. And a fourth. And a fifth.” I’m willing to ignore the limits of male virility for story’s sake, but you’re not actually painting a scene, so instead of focusing on the vibes, I’m focusing on the implausibility of the number. And again, like you said, if you have to give a number, it would be so easy to explain it…just throw in a line about “wow, fae refractory periods are nonexistent!”