Review by Booklist Review
In the mythology of Arnott's unnamed country, in the time after a coup has engendered a dystopian world where abnormal weather events grow increasingly cataclysmic, a rain heron will suddenly appear to bring floods where droughts wrought devastation and snow to cool tropical beaches. In a mountain cave, an old woman named Ren knows where such a valuable creature exists, and its survival depends on the woman's stealth and anonymity. Her protection falters, however, when Ren is discovered by a troop of renegade militia led by Zoe, a young woman whose family's genetic gifts have been used in pursuit of a pod of giant squid which, like the heron, possess magical and equally coveted powers. In their mutual affinity for these otherworldly creatures, Ren and Zoe stand out in an encroaching world bent on exploitation and oppression. Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's visceral The Road, an air of savage solitude infuses Arnott's lyrically atmospheric postapocalyptic novel, where trauma and resilience are connected to memory and the loss of both self and surroundings.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Arnott's vibrant and violent latest (after Flames) follows two women on their hunt for a mythical creature in the aftermath of a violent military coup. After a folkloric sketch about a legendary rain heron's ability to grant both bounty and destruction, Arnott shifts to Ren, an older woman living on a mountain whose quiet life is interrupted by the arrival of army lieutenant Zoe Harker, a veteran of the coup. Zoe has been ordered to capture the rain heron, and she tries to force Ren to reveal the bird's location. Ren resists, leading to a fight in which Zoe loses an eye. Flashbacks flesh out Zoe's childhood in a seaside town, where a stranger kills Zoe's aunt for defying him, an episode that leads Zoe to realize, in the present, that she's become the invader. As Zoe continues the search for the rain heron with Ren in tow and her medic, Daniel, tending to both women's wounds, Arnott describes mythic scenery ("Soon after entering these wild fields the road doglegged, and over this bend Daniel saw the river's death"). Though the plot doesn't always hang together, Arnott fascinates with fable-like stories and thoughtful meditations on the consequences of lessons learned too late. The beautiful imagery and magical moments carry the reader through an occasionally bumpy journey. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist, Arnott (Flames) unfolds the story of young Ren, surviving in the remote reaches of a country nearly destroyed by coup d'état. When a young female soldier comes in search of the fabled rain heron--a scary, shape-shifting bird that can change the weather--Ren is reluctantly drawn in.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Following a coup in an unnamed country and a mysterious weather disruption, a fugitive woman and the military officer pursuing her find their fates converging in the search for a mythical bird who can either rescue or destroy at will. An unlucky farmer endures "six years of hungry, dismal failure" until an apocalyptic storm and the accompanying appearance of a spectral rain heron transform both the land and the farmer's fortunes, earning her great wealth and bitter envy. Following a vengeful neighbor's attack on the bird--the farmer's perceived protector--drought starves the fields, and the farmer, weakened by infection, is left for dead. We next meet her in the wilderness, where she has fled not only the country's military coup, but also her own shadowy past. In the meantime, in a remote coastal village, a young girl and her aunt are part of a small, secretive community that uses human blood to lure squid into nets in order to extract the squid ink so highly prized by paint makers. But the arrival of an outsider obsessed with learning these squid-catching secrets breeds suspicion and, finally, violence. With blood on her hands--human, not aquatic--young Zoe disappears into the very different life of the army, thereby becoming an instrument of the coup (the details of which remain hazy). The stories of the two women, Ren the fugitive and Zoe her tormenter, become one when Zoe is ordered to find Ren and make her reveal the rain heron's hiding place. Military generals presumably want to use the captured bird's power to alter the seasons and who knows what else. Superb descriptions of nature and weather, of human emotion and animal instinct, by Australian novelist Arnott evoke a landscape that is both startlingly immediate and mysteriously otherworldly: the perfect setting for a tense narrative of eco-disaster and fragile endurance. At once an urgent thriller and an elegiac fable, this mesmerizing tale is as lyrical as it is suspenseful. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
