'Struck by famine and drought, large swathes of North America are now known as the Desert. Set against this mythic and vast backdrop, The Last Storm is a timely story of a family of Rainmakers whose rare and arcane gift has become a curse.
'Jesse stopped rainmaking the moment his abilities became deadly, bringing down not just rain but scorpions, strange snakes and spiders. He thought he could help a land suffering from climate catastrophe, but he was wrong. When his daughter Ash inherited the tainted gift carried down the family bloodline, Jesse did his best to stop her. His attempt went tragically wrong, and ever since then he has believed himself responsible for his daughter's death.
'But now his wife Karina––who never gave up looking for their daughter—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, the estranged couple set out across the desolate landscape 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.'
One of the things that I've come to enjoy about Tim Lebbon's work is that his books will feature strange horrors, dark mysteries, and warring alien creatures, but at the heart of everything it comes down to love, family, and connections. This is never more apparent than in The Last Storm, which sees a family broken by tragedy and betrayal, fighting to come back together to avert death and disaster on an epic scale.
The Last Storm transports readers to a near future, where global warming and environmental changes have ravaged parts of the world. A huge sprawl of dry and arid land, simply known as The Desert, takes up most of North America, with once rich, green land reduced to harsh environment where humans struggle to survive. Despite this, most people are still doing what they do today, pretending it's not that bad and carrying on with their life, going to the office, grabbing coffee, and scrolling social media on their phones.
There is one family who see things a little differently, however. Rainmakers. A family who has been able to summon huge rainstorms for several generations. Building a strange device, being called to each individual component, a Rainmaker will attach themselves to their apparatus, calling forth the rain from some strange realm only they can access. For generations this allowed them to do some good for the world, but when Jesse experiences a strange incident where blood begins to rain from the sky, and venomous snakes and insects fall to earth, he swears to never use his abilities again. Years later, when his daughter, Ash, experiences the same, it ends in tragedy; with Ash believed dead.
Living alone, isolated from the rest of the world, Jesse is approached by his estranged wife, Karina. Karina has been searching The Desert for sign of her daughter for years, believing her to still be alive, and she's heard stories about a young woman making it rain. Believing that it could be her only chance to see her daughter again, Karina reaches out to Jesse to help. Knowing that if it is Ash, and she is using her abilities, that it could lead to tragedy, Jesse sets out with Karina to try and save his daughter from a terrible fate.
This isn't the first time that Lebbon has given readers an eco-horror tale, he did it wonderfully with Eden in 2020, and in a lot of ways this book feels like the other side to that coin. Where Eden was filled with lush forests and wonderful vistas, The Last Storm is a barren wasteland of the dead and dying. The horror of Eden seems to be nature fighting back against humanity, and The Last Storm seems to have humanity unleashing further horrors onto the world. There's nothing to say that they're not happening in the same world, however, as I can see them taking place in the same ecologically wrecked Earth. I enjoyed how the two books had a number of similarities, yet The Last Storm approached eco-horror in such a different way, and felt more cosmic horror a lot of the time too.
The main focus of The Last Storm are the family of Rainmakers, Jesse, Karina, and Ash. Several other characters are involved in this narrative, and even end up playing major parts, but the focus is this one family. By the time we meet the three of them all of their lives have effectively been ruined. Ash has been surviving alone in The Desert for years, having believed that her father tried to kill her, and that her gift was some kind of dark curse. Karina lost her daughter, possibly for good, left her husband for what she saw as the worst betrayal, and has had to go through some awful things alone in The Desert searching for Ash. And Jesse saw his beloved gift change into an awful power, saw it kill people, and has believed that he caused the death of his daughter. To say that they're all dealing with trauma is something of an understatement.
Despite this, there are some moments of genuine joy to be found in The Last Storm, especially with Ash. She has begun to experience parts of her gifts again, with pieces of a new apparatus calling out to her. The feeling gives her hope, it allows her to hope that perhaps what happened before was down to her father, and that she might be able to do some good in a world that desperately needs it. The relationship she forms with Cee, another young woman travelling The Desert, is lovely too. A genuine friendship begins to form between them, and as their bond grows it evolves into what could be the seeds of a romantic relationship too. In a world where people have so little, where most struggle just to get by, it's lovely to see small glimmers of hope and kindness throughout the story.
I absolutely loved the horror elements in the book too, and we get small hints across the narrative of the dark powers lurking just beyond our understanding. At the climax of the book we get to see and experience some truly frightening things, and it does leave you with a few questions as to what power Ash and her father were tapping into, and what things were lurking in that other place. Because we never get given solid answers (a big part of the horror for me), and because of the nature of it I'd say that The Last Storm felt a lot more like cosmic horror for me, just one set in an awful ecological disaster of a future.
The Last Storm is a solid story, one that moves at a fast pace, shifting between several characters as the universe draws them all together for an explosive finale that will leave you shocked and reeling. There are some truly frightening moments to be found in this book, but I also think that a lot of people will find most horror in the frighteningly realistic future that Lebbon has created here.
Jesse breathed deeply a few times and turned his face to the sky. It was clear and pale blue, scorched almost cloudless by the unrelenting sun. He remembered his mother doing the same, and he had a rich, living memory of the first time he’d asked what she was doing. He’d been maybe five years old then, and she had been five years away from the flames that would consume her.
I’m wishing upon a cloud, she’d said, laughing as Jesse assumed the same position. See that one, son? It looks like an elephant.
He saw no elephants now. There were a few scattered cirrus clouds so high up that they were barely smudges against deep blue infinity. Other than that, the sky offered no signs of rain.
Jesse shrugged the box from his shoulder and opened the metal fastenings. Placing it carefully on the dusty ground, he knelt before it and opened the lid. The lid’s underside was still vibrant with the inlaid tree design, as if only the outside had been weathered and worn away by time. He sometimes wondered whether he was also like that. He was approaching forty, but sometimes it felt as though he’d already lived two lifetimes.
Continuing his deep breathing, he took out the apparatus. It was light and small, the length of his forearm, comprised of a series of tubes and bulbs, electrical components and brass casings, and other pieces gathered and gleaned from many sources. He’d built it as a teenager, hearing his mother’s whispered encouragement in his mind with each element he added, the turn of every screw. At one end was the focus, and he turned the dial that extruded the small, pointed horn that would aim at the sky.
Closing the lid of the box, he placed the locator pins in their corresponding holes, and then he was almost ready.
Almost.
He took two long wires and unspooled them, ensuring that both ends were connected correctly to the apparatus. Then he extracted two sterile needles from their lined container on one edge of the device and fitted them to the ends of the wires.
He glanced up to see Wolf watching from twenty metres away.
“I need to be on my own,” Jesse said.”
“Right. On your own.” Wolf scuffed the dried soil with one of his boots, kicked at a plant stem. It crumbled beneath his foot, showering crumpled stem and leaves to the ground. “Just fix my place,” he said, and he turned away.
It was a strange turn of phrase. It almost left Jesse feeling sorry for him.
He pumped his fist, pushed one needle into his right forearm and stuck it there with surgical tape, then did the same with the other. A tingle of anticipation made him shiver, even in the heat. Twin droplets of blood ran around his arms and dripped to the dusty ground, and were sucked down into the parched land. He wondered how much blood had been spilled into this arid soil, then he closed his eyes and shut away the idea. That was not his business. He dealt not in drugs, but in rain, and his rush was not balanced with pain.
Feeling the sun stretching the skin on his face, sweat running down his neck and torso, and the dusty, gritty reality of this dying land, Jesse closed his eyes and brought himself inward.
Soon, he heard the inner tides of his own personal storms as the thrilling flow began to build. He drifted with those tides. He let them carry him, knowing that he would always remain afloat, comfortable. Sometimes, he believed it was the only safe place. Even when he was with Karina he felt exposed and in danger. Everywhere he looked he saw the world stealing back control from humanity, punishment for so many years of abuse.
Jesse opened his inner eye to view the vague, dark pebbly beach he could not feel beneath his feet, the sea he would never smell, and the distant shadow of tall cliffs to his right. He felt himself balanced perfectly between them all. This was his place. He called it The Shore.
At some distance he heard the soft whirl of his apparatus starting to spin, turn and cycle, and smelled the faintly familiar tang of ozone on the air.
Eyes still closed, he waited for the first drops of rain to fall.
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