The Rain

The Rain by Joseph A. Turkot
7/18/23; 354 pages
Blackstone Publishing
Rain Trilogy #1

The Rain by Joseph A. Turkot is a highly recommended survival novel set in a postapocalyptic America.

Civilization has collapsed. After almost twenty years of rain, almost all of North America is underwater. Any survivors have boats and/or made it to land on higher elevations while avoiding the face eaters, people addicted to "Red" a drug that makes them murderous and cannibalistic.

There are two story lines that are told through alternating chapters. In the first, Tanner, seventeen, and her adoptive caretaker, Russell, have long been searching by boat for Leadville, Colorado, which is rumored to be "the highest-elevation city in America, the last place where it’s not raining." In the alternate chapters, the plot follows Rook Wallace. Rook is a meteorologist who joined a a pharmaceutical company called Yasper. His job there is to help the company maintain a trade route between groups of survivors. He kept up contact with his parents until he stopped receiving their letters.

This is a bleak end-of-the-world climate science fiction novel with Yasper, a pharmaceutical company, an equal antagonist in the overall plot. The two different narratives remain separate until the very end when a connection is made that most readers will have deduced much earlier, but the journey of these characters is the point.

Character development is most certainly present, but, as with any mythological tale, the more important element is the struggle and encounters on the journeys of the heroes. It is obvious at the open ended conclusion of The Rain, that there has to be second novel.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Blackstone Publishing via NetGalley.