The Rain
A Novel
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Perfect for fans of the hit TV series The Last of Us and novels like Camp Zero, this riveting novel set in a postapocalyptic America brings us a chilling look at survival in the face of a catastrophic climate disaster and the collapse of civilization as we know it.
The rain began nineteen years ago, and it never stopped: more than a foot of rain per day until almost the whole of North America was underwater. Those who survived the first year were forced to take drastic measures, and those who held to the veneer of civilization were few and very far between.
Seventeen-year-old Tanner grew up after the rain began. She and her adoptive caretaker, Russell, have long sought a fabled Colorado refuge, a dream that has kept them going through years of brutal trials as they try to stay one step ahead of the “face eaters”—people addicted to a mysterious drug that drives them to murder and cannibalism.
When the rain began, Rook Wallace was a meteorologist who joined a company called Yasper that, years after its emergency funding dried up, continues its stated mission to help survivors by maintaining a trade network among isolated island communities. But when Rook learns the insidious truth of what keeps the Yasper mission going, he is forced to risk everything that remains of his former life to try to stop it.
As Tanner’s and Rook’s stories converge in time and geography, readers will be thrilled by this postapocalyptic tale for fans of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Josh Malerman’s Bird Box.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The world ends not with a bang but a gurgle, in this dark but predictable eco-disaster extravaganza from Turkot (the Darkin Saga series). Set in a near-future wherein devastating global climate change has resulted in almost two decades of nonstop rainfall inundating the entire planet, the story alternates between two converging narrative threads: in one, teenage Tanner and her fatherly guardian, Russell, struggle to survive multiple challenges as they boat across the country en route to the Colorado haven of Leadville, purportedly "the highest-elevation city in America, the last place where it's not raining." In the other, meteorologist Rook Wallace is hired as support staff for Yasper, a pharmaceutical company that pushes its dangerously addictive mood-lifting painkiller "Red" on the masses enduring the drowned world's emotional and physical deprivations. Characters in both story lines are threatened regularly by "face eaters," ravaging packs of cannibals who represent irreparable cracks in the veneer of civilization. Though Turkot's plot breaks little new ground for the apocalyptic thriller genre, the author credibly extrapolates the horrifying consequences of his tale's ecological nightmare. Readers will appreciate his refusal to commit to an upbeat outcome for this harrowing adventure. It's as bleak and relentless as the rain itself.
