Title: When the Rain Came
Author: Matt Eicheldinger
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Pages: 314
My GoodReads Rating: 
Aurora, 17, lives with her foster
parents, Niko and Jada, when the rain begins. A relentless mix of drizzle and
downpour that scientists call an unprecedented global disaster. As the water
levels rise, the mansion they live in gets flooded. Niko and Jada are preppers
and they have prepared for the worst eventuality, with emergency bags all ready
for use. They also impress upon her the rules. Rule no 1: You prep for you and
no one else. Rule no 2: Two is one and one is none.
Niko and Jada provide for Aurora but
show her no affection. One night, Jada lets her guard down and shows Aurora her
vulnerable side. The next morning, Niko and Jada have disappeared, gone with
their emergency bags. Once they have gone, Aurora finds a map to a place called
the Hill, which promises a refuge. When the mansion is attacked by men with
criminal intentions, Aurora escapes, intent on getting to the Hill.
Along the way, she befriends a young boy
called Kota and learns of the Dark Pools, supposedly controlled by Shui gui, a
supernatural entity, that swallow everything in their path. Both Aurora and
Kota are in a vulnerable situation and they settle into a protective sibling
vibe. For Aurora, who has never had a family, Kota is the nearest thing to one.
In the midst of terrifying challenges,
the two learn to prioritise and think on their feet. Will they ever manage to
get to the Hill? When they reach it, will they find it a place of safety or
danger?
This is Book 1 of a trilogy, and is
written in the 1st person POV of Aurora.
WHAT I LIKED:
The chapters are short. The author has
done a wonderful job with the setting. The writing was urgent and atmospheric,
making me feel sadness, fear and concern for Aurora and Kota.
The descriptions were beautiful:
Each drop explodes like tiny bullets,
turning the surface of brown liquid into a roiling battlefield of ripples and
waves.
When that sky meets the horizon of the
water, steam rises in a ghostly fog, shrouding the scene in an apocalyptic
mist.
Rain pounds everything in sight, a
thousand tiny hammers drilling into the surface of the churning water.
The action keeps us on edge, as Aurora
battles dangers as varied as cruel humans, wild animals and the wrath of
nature. The characters’ actions and the description of the setting and the
situation complement each other.
There is an ironic foreshadowing in the
words, Today … ended as a memorable day. A good day. And maybe tomorrow will be
even better, that piqued my interest.
The thing that struck me about this
book, from the very first paragraph, was the voice of Aurora, how strong and
expressive it was.
We get a sense of disaster and chaos, a
dismantling of order. The disaster helps us understand what is truly
significant, and how we humans chase the wrong things. Things that people owned
and took pride in, cars, bicycles, fences, all trapped under the moving slush
of filth and debris.
The tagline of the book 'If everything
falls apart, what will you hold on to?' was something that the book succeeded in
living up to.
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:
This book would have fit squarely under
the genre of Climate-fiction, a genre of literature that is sorely needed these
days, but no one, not even the preppers, ever addresses why it is raining for
months on end.
The world is in chaos, and yet some
systems are working. Even when Niko and Jada begin to run out of food and
water, there is no mention of sanitation issues. In one building where the
children take refuge, Kota uses the toilet, so sanitation is apparently fine.
None of the characters talk about bodily discomfort issues. There is a
nightmare on, and sewage entering homes should have been the first consequence.
There are some things that don’t make
sense. How is a parking lot dry when tall buildings are flooded, with only the
tips visible?
I would have liked to have had a little
more back story about Kota. He seems to be a token diversity character. We are
not told anything about his background, except that his grandmother has told
him about the shui gui, spirits from Chinese folklore, while he calls his
father Baba, a term for father in Indian, Middle Eastern and African cultures.
WHAT DIDN’T WORK FOR ME:
The situation isn’t rooted in time and
place. We get no sense of when this is happening, a future time, or even a
parallel earth.
When Kota steps into an abyss inside a
building to get a canoe, Aurora gives him a flashlight which he clenches
between his teeth, before swimming away. Moments later, both Aurora and another
character, Markell, ask him a question, and he answers both questions easily.
We are not told about him having taken the flashlight out of his mouth to
answer.
Aurora didn’t act as if she was 17. She
seemed to me to be younger, around 14 or 15. Also, for someone who has lived
all her life in the foster system, she has no experiences, positive or
negative, related to foster homes. Just an indifference to that part of her
life, which is strange. Also, she never talks about herself in the near future,
her plans for when she turns 18. This adds to the impression that she might be
younger.
ALL SAID AND DONE:
Living in a city with poor
infrastructure, I have seen enough of the damage that flooding can do to assess
how much worse things could get when worst-case scenarios become real. There
are some kinks that should have been edited out. Despite them, I enjoyed this
story about a modern-day deluge of Biblical proportions.
(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.)
