There's a kind of sci-fi scenario which is a tricky balancing act to pull off. Basically when you move a number of generations on, the populus are trapped in an area of some form, some disaster or technological shift has happened and the powers that be both use this as a reason to keep control over the people, to the extent of not solving, or even exacerbating the disaster. I always find these stories a hard pull, because I find it hard to believe that the lure of power within a disaster is greater than the desire to be freed from the situation. And I also find it difficult to believe that a couple of generations is all it will that for the people to become so pliant to allow it. This is the core issue I had with Rainwalkers, where we are thrown into an intriguing situation that never quite convinced.

Its the future and to combat climate crisis, scientists have seeded the clouds with some form of bacteria that makes it rain more often (I will let the science go here....) However the bacteria mutates making the rain deadly to be out in. Its a solid - if silly - situation, and one made a little bit more difficult because this all takes place in the Salinas Valley in California. The way the Valley is surrounded by lowish mountains makes it vaguely plausible that it could be cut off, but nothing really explains the lack of flying vehicles, or indeed radio signals that leave the valley. Instead it is cut off and a local government is fighting and endless war against the "outsiders" and of course any dissidents. They have discovered that some children are immune to the rain (hence Rainwalkers) and are desperately trying to find more to help them fight the war - rather than discover why and solve the problem .This involves leaving kids in the rain to die - at one point at a success rate of ten percent. Its a great and shocking visual, but I cannot imagine the valley having a large enough population that thirty kids at a time can be just murdered. Around this scenario we have a father looking for his daughter and people trying to escape conscription. Its nominally and action-adventure piece, though in reality it ends up being the character running around slowly filling in bits of world-building and uncovering the secret plot. It also has one of my least favourite solutions to the scientific part of the crisis - I am not a fan of magic blood...

I am probably more down on this than I expected as individually few of these niggles would get to me, but together they just ended up bugging me. As action it didn't work, I never felt the peril for the daughter plot and the baddies plot was just too ludicrous. There are some good ideas here, but it just didn't work for me.

So beautiful. Not only the prose, but the style of the story, there was something quite unique about it and it deeply connected with me. I highly recommend it!

One reason I enjoyed this story is how conceivable it is. Rainwalkers is an all too possible and slightly futuristic novel. Scientists sought to solve the devastating drought in a once robust land with genetically engineered rain clouds. Despite their best intentions, this man-made rain turned out to be lethal to humans. Rumor is, there are some people who are not affected by the toxic rain... these select people are known as rainwalkers. The book focuses on Willie Taft, who is ex-military and will stop at nothing to be reunited with his daughter after being separated by the authoritarian Administration.
The good intentions gone wrong, parents stopping at nothing to save their child, and the powerful governing body having no qualms of sacrificing few for "the greater good", it is easy to see why this story feels conceivable -especially now in 2021. The book did take a while to make me feel invested but it is made up for it as the story continued. This is the kind of story that stays with you and I am very glad that I had the privilege to read it.
I physically read as well as listed to the audio version of this book. Matt Ritter himself narrated the audio and was the perfect voice for Taft. I look forward to reading another novel by Ritter.