About the book…
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.
My thanks to the wonderful Eleanor at Titan Books for my gifted review copy of ‘The Last Storm’, Tim Lebbon’s newest novel which is available from all good bookshops from 5th July!
One might think ,that in these unprecedented times,the last thing you would want to read is a dsytopian epic whilst living in one.
When your head is filled with the constant concern of the pandemic being over (or is it?), the cost of living driving people to ever increasing heights of ludicrousness (Lurpak wearing security tags, anyone?) and a lack of leadership of our society in any sense of the word,why would you want to indulge in a post apocalyptic North American landscape that brings to life the apocryphal cries of the environmentalist vangurards?
Because, when you the reader places yourself in the hands of an exceptionally visionary writer such as Tim Lebbon, you lean into the narrative and find yourself consumed.
He hooks you in the prologue where he shows you a teaser of what father figure Jesse can do,how he parses his family talent for rainmaking into financial gain. Until it goes horribly wrong…
Fast forward 20 years to a separated couple and their believed dead daughter, all living an existence which stems from the time a storm was unleashed which could not be contained.
Jesse has retreated in a penance like exile away from what is left of modern society. His ex-wife, Karina,spends her days far away from him, scouring the news for signs of her daughter still being alive. Their daughter, Ash , tells her tale in a first person narrative, bringing the reader in closer to the experiences she has been through, the place she calls Skunksville,where she goes when trying to summon rain.
The problem with rainmaking is that not all rain is created equal, and the price you pay for making it can sometimes be deadly.
And in a landscape of floods, droughts and famine, where each and every action is an extreme, Ash wanders, Jesus like in her 9 years of being an outcast,journeying to find a way to control the storms inside her.
Her Damascene moment is coming across a guitar case, and she begins to fill it with items that speak to her, and in so doing she starts recreating her rainmaker apparatus,believed destroyed by her father.
Jesse, begged by Karina to find Ash as he is possibly the only one to help her control her talents, could be the stopgap between an uncontrollable storm and hope for humanity.
But first he has to reconcile his guilt that he killed his daughter with the fact that she is still alive.And with a talent for making rain marking her as a target for the wrong kind of people , the race to find her is on.
It’s a beautiful story, prefaced by Tim as having been written during the first lockdown, where the acts of heroism which defined you meant staying small, quiet, and safe indoors. The reaction to this of travelling far and wide in the expanses of the desert, combined with the family dynamics of Jesse,Karina and Ash,invoke the days when families were divided,kept apart, and told to only take what you need.
The Soakers,they brought to mind those who decimated shop shelves and took without mercy .The Hotbloods brought to mind those who threw themselves at theory after theory without an evidence base to stack their dubious logic on.
In one corner you have those who manage to live in the Desert, who learn to survive and in the other, those who would use a rainmaker regardless of the consequence to the scrubland and exhausted landscapes,making them ripe for flash floods and tidal devastation.
And in the middle, Ash,who reminds me very much of Roland from Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, gifted with a generational inheritance which has cursed her to wander,moving on cues only she can see,and collecting parts that speak to her of a memory and a time that she cannot hold onto.
As she narrates her endeavours, we catch glimpses into her life fleshed out by the alternating chapters Jesse and Karina tell. Her relationship with the marvelous Cee is juxtaposed by that with her family and the journey she has gone on to get away from them.
Filmic in vision, sweeping in scope and searing in themes,I would venture this is Lebbon’s most personal and finest novel to date (although a long time fan I am yet to have worked my way through his entire back catalogue so whilst this might seem a bold claim, I would recommend The Last Storm unreservedly).
About the author…
Tim Lebbon was born in London in 1969. He has been writing ever since he can remember. The first story he recalls actually finishing was when he was nine years old. It involved a train hijacking, and one of the hijackers being clumsy enough to drop his gun. Naturally the hero found the gun and went on a killing spree. Die Hard on the 10:17 from Paddington.
His first published story was in the UK indie magazine Psychotrope in 1994, and in 1997 Tanjen published his first novel Mesmer. Since then he’s had almost thirty books published in the UK and US by Bantam Spectra, Allison & Busby, Night Shade Books, Simon & Schuster, Leisure Books, PS Publishing, Necessary Evil Press, Cemetery Dance and many others.
Quite a few of his novellas and novels have been optioned for the screen, including White, Exorcising Angels, Until She Sleeps, Face, In Perpetuiry, and The Nature of Balance.
Late in 2006 Tim Lebbon became a full-time writer.
This source of this biography was Tim Lebbon’s official website www.timlebbon.net.
Twitter @TitanBooks @timlebbon
Author
bridgeman.lenny@gmail.com