The Last Storm by Tim Lebbon
I would like to thank Titan Books for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan
Published – Out Now
Price – £8.99 paperback £6.99 Kindle eBook
With global warming out of control, large swathes of North America have been struck by famine and drought and are now known as the Desert. A young woman sets out across this dry, hostile landscape, gradually building an arcane apparatus she believes will bring rain to the parched earth.
Jesse lives alone, far from civilization. Once, he too made rain, but he stopped when his abilities caused fatalities, bringing down not just rain but scorpions, strange snakes and spiders. When his daughter Ash inherited this tainted gift, Jesse did his best to stop her. His attempt went tragically wrong, and he believes himself responsible for her death.
But now his estranged wife Karina brings news that Ash is still alive. And she’s rainmaking again. Terrified of what she might bring down upon the desperate communities of the Desert, they set out to find her. But Jesse and Karina are not the only ones looking for Ash. As the storms she conjures become more violent and deadly, some follow her seeking hope. And one is hungry for revenge.
Even as I type this the UK is about to get another heat wave with temperatures in some parts expected to be 30 degrees plus. The frequency and length of such events is increasing. The old joke that the British summer is long and wet is now a thing of the past. WE are all seeing the effects of climate change. It is in our future. Science Fiction has long pondered its impact but less so a thriller or a horror tale. In Tim Lebbon’s great The Last Storm we get a powerful tale combining these genres to give us a memorable tale of loss and a search for hope in a very dangerous world.
In the mid-21st Century climate change has turned most of the American Greta Plains into a Desert. Water is scarce even in the big cities and so too is food. Life is hard and cheap. Dangerous gangs who love the heat roam the world; water is more expensive than gasoline and for many each day is a battle for survival. Jesse though has a family gift – Rainmaking. Through an unusual ability to create strange devices and seek water his family has used their gift sparingly but for reward. Until the days it goes horribly wrong inflicting death and destruction. Jesse decided to try and give this up but was shocked when his daughter Ash showed an even greater and more powerful gift. He argued and it appeared she ran away and may have died. But many years later Jesse’s estranged wife Karina says she has located Ash and the two cross the nightmarish land of the USA to find her. But Ash is now attracting a lot more attention and her own internal Storm is also preparing for its release that could destroy the world.
This is a skilful genre-bending tale that I really really enjoyed mixing a post-apocalyptic future with strange magic and a deadly game of cat and mouse. Summer is the perfect time to read this tale because the whole atmosphere Lebbon creates is of a stifling dry heat that bleaches away colour and life from the world and even the people who live in it. It’s a future of scarcity where water is recycled and expensive and everyone is usually watching out for themselves. You sense a world getting closer to its end and although there are electric vehicles its more akin to a Western-style world of small towns, dangerous bandits and merchants known as Soakers travelling around selling water for cash or bartering. Lebbon gives this tale a sense of depth and history without excessive infodumps but instead through character’s conversations but backstories we see how this world got here and also how it works (or in many ways stutters along). Its very impressive scene setting.
Into this land we meet a broken family. Starting with Jesse is a middle-aged man who has ran away from the world and hidden himself in a forest living off the land. It is Karina’s arrival that finally spurs him out. He first chapter shows us Jesse’s biggest failure as a Rainmaker – one that will have a big impact on this search, and this is where Lebbon weaves the horror element in – in a mix of a biblical like miracle we see rain arrive in a land where water has not been seen but then almost equally biblical it leads to a plague of deadly strange creatures appearing with devastating effect. A very stark warning of what Ash may bring soon herself. My only issue is I’d had liked a little bit more time to know these Jesse and Karina a bit more but the pace of the novel allows little time for backstory to be fleshed out too long without draining the tension of the search and what happens when they all meet.
With Ash the only character who we experience a first person viewpoint we meet someone who knows she is not always aware of her own world; being driven by something to do things she does not fully understand but she knows a Strom must be summoned. She is an enigmatic yet likeable charver you want to be safe and found but their decreasing episodes of lucidity mean that often she is easy prey for others. Into which we get a strange ex-addict named Cee who becomes Ash’s Guardian and a mysterious and dangerous man named Jimi who has a score to settle with Rainmakers. Again, the whole feeling is very Western-like in a family travelling great distances in a desert to find a missing family member mixed with strange travellers they encounter who may be good or evil. Overlaying the whole story and pushing it towards the fantastical is a nightmarish sense of something else using all these events for its own aims and ambitions leading toa devastating finale of bloodshed with an added twist of cosmic horror apocalypse.
The Last Storm is a smart mix of entertaining horror and a subtle reminder that our world is changing fast and we don’t know where it is going. It manages to be human and yet also a dark and dangerous world we treat carefully around in. Perfect for a hot summer read as it may give you a much needed shiver but necessarily a reassuring one. Definitely well worth your time!
