My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with the chance to read a digital copy of "Thw Rain Artist" by Claire Rudy Foster.
The story started great. It was a intresting Climate Change premise and I loved the flowershop and the umbrella designer.
From chapter 2 everything gets so much bleaker.
Chapter 3 made me extremely unconfortable as the level of discusting events made no sense whatsoever.
What was ther purpose?
Just to disgust the reader with not only phedophilia, but also murder and a thist for inflicting harm...
I cannot recommend this book to anyone after those triggering events that had no meaning.

What an amazing novel. The Rain Artist has everything to become a classic. The prose is great and everything that's on the page is captivating, from the characters' backstory to the worldbuilding. I loved the three protagonists (Celine, Paul, and Yochanna) and couldn't wait to see what happened to them. The concept itself around the lack of rain and rain parties was intriguing and very well executed, making the story believable. I wish the book would have been longer and some parts of it a bit more developed, because it was hard to put it down once I finished and I kept wanting more.

Congratulations to Claire Rudy Foster for writing such a brilliant story. I look forward to reading their next novel.

Claire Rudy Foster knows how to write. The prose is exceptional, world building is a masterclass. Just when you thought you've seen the depths of billionaire depravity, Foster brings it to another level in The Rain Artist, but not without a hopeful dose of humanity with our protagonists, Celine, Yochanna, and Paul. I can't wait to see what Foster brings to the table next!

I remain unsure how I feel about this book. The concept was fascinating - society in the future where climate change has impacted so significantly that it no longer rains, icebergs are privately owned, etc. I struggled to connect with the characters or their journey because the writing style is quite removed/distant. It’s a unique style of writing and not at all bad, it just didn’t give me what I needed to be invested in the book. I rarely say this (!) but I wonder if the book needed to be longer, or be planned as a series - it felt like so many concepts and worlds were included (cities that were classic science fiction, underground societies that read like CS Lewis, a danger zone, the final garden) that we spent very little time in any of them and it was hard to grasp why they mattered to the overall story

In a future where rain is a luxury enjoyed exclusively by the ultra-rich, the world’s only umbrella-maker is framed for the high-profile murder of the quadrillionaire patriarch who controls the earth’s last natural resources.

This was really cool. Weird, but in a good way. I enjoyed it.