3.5 stars

This novel was something different, full of magical realism set in a time that isn't too far off for us climate-wise, this was an original read full of descriptive and emotive language.

I enjoyed this novel, but I wanted to enjoy it more than I did given the reviews I'd read before picking it up. Whether it was just my mood when I read it I don't know, but it took me quite a long time to make my way through this novel.

With a mythological slant, we meet several characters whose lives intersect, mistakes are made and important lessons are learned. Initially, we meet the Rain Heron, a beautiful and magical bird I could see clearly in my mind. We meet soldiers in the jungle, hunting for the Rain Heron, determined to get it no matter what, despite not knowing why their superiors want it; blind obedience. We then go to a coastal village where magical ink is harvested from giant squid by a select few using a method held secret by those who give their life to this job, where an encounter with a man from the north has drastic consequences. Back to the soldiers and the Rain Heron, and the outcome of the hunt and capture of this magical creature. There are plenty of lessons hidden within this story.

Thanks to NetGalley and Text Publishing for a digital copy of this novel in return for an honest review.

This one wasn't for me.

I really couldn't get a hold of the magical realism/science fiction - I'm really not sure which it was, even if it was actually one of these genres.

Having said that the actual writing was good, and it seemed to be well edited.

Stunning, immersive and hugely original, 'The Rain Heron' is a richly imagined allegorical fable for our times. Set in a slightly futuristic world where climate change has impacted severely on the land and its people, Arnott spins three tales of strong women making lives out of the damaged land.

In the first, a poor farmer first encounters the rain heron when she is close to death after years of drought. Wrought of water, it brings her wealth and prosperity by healing her land. But as her neighbour discovers, the heron can not only be benevolent, gifting rain to the land, it can also be cruel and vengeful, plunging the land back into drought.

In the second tale, Ren has taken refuge in a mountain cave in the forest after her city was overrun by a military coup. She lives off what she can grow or find in the forest but fears the news that the military are coming to her mountain looking for something. The young woman lieutenant Harker, leading the soldiers is relentless and will not stop until she gets what she wants.

The third tale tells of Zoe, a young woman, living on the coast, whose Aunt teaches her the traditional way of harvesting a special and costly ink from the sea, until their lives and way of life is disrupted by a Northerner who wants to steal their secret in his quest to be rich.

Together these tales culminate in a picture of a world where the environment is subject to greater forces than can be controlled by mere human will. Arnott's crafting of the exquisite rain heron as a fearful power over the climate, either benevolent in bringing gentle rain or cruelly scorching the land, shows it is heedless of what humans want from it, refusing to be controlled by man. His writing is beautiful and lyrical with the sights and sounds of richly imagined landscapes brought to life.

Brilliant piece of writing.
Part dystopian, fable and reality all wrapped around the rain heron. It is linked to the climate so man must have it to control the climate. But the heron is one mean bird.
In a nameless land a coup is occurring. Ren flees to lives as a hermit, isolated. Her world is destroyed when an Army unit is sent to capture the rain heron.
The characters are strong women, weaker men, linked loosely but all fascinating. The writer cleverly invokes the feel of the weather, the violence man inflicts on man and the glory of nature. This is a book of immense imagery, impact and uniqueness.

Everything is Connected

In every scene of this book, the characters are positioned within their earthly environments. And despite the fact that they are all souls traumatised by violence – either their own or others, or their bodies, or the collapsed post-capitalist world – this narrative positioning of their lives within a world that endlessly envelops them is a comfort. Because it's our ultimate reality but not our current experience and it's good to be reminded.

We don't seem to collectively quite see ourselves as children of the earth yet, a positioning that has been our species' main experience but one which we've only recent centuries been able to prodigally shake off as too much bother. We're getting back there, though, don't you think? We are, as Joni Mitchell implored, beginning to get "back to the garden" by force and necessity. Maybe once we stop referring to it as "the environment" will be a hearty indication that the earth's stopper being an abstraction and instead puffed back around us again.

The characters we meet in The Rain Heron are all beaten and battle-worn, subsisting, some in the military that's taken over this unnamed country, some trying to avoid them and eke out a sort of survival.

This could be bleak pandemic reading, with the USA on fire and its people being warred upon by its police state force as I write, and the political proponents of the status quo trying to stop the future from finally being born.

But this story, despite its bereftness and its bodily fluids and frozen nervous systems, is not bleak because the land is always here a character, and it weaves through all the happenings and tethers us as readers to the story's home. Art shows us what we're missing in a more holistic way than the best comprehensive climate change data cannot

Everything is alive and connected and pansychically active in this fable. Lightning licks trees; the wind uses its fangs to chew barns into splinters. Wounds spit pain, an injured arm is submerged in a creek for pain relief while "thick threads of pus swam away down the stream."

The rain heron is a bird that comes from the clouds, its body so pale you can see through it. Some of the most beautiful passages of the book describe its movements:

"As if sensing her gaze, the bird launched itself from the tree, trailing rain from its talons. It twirled in the windless air, shaking ice and dew across the clearing and over Ren and her grandmother, drawing from them shivers and shrieks, before falling in a straight, fast dive into the tarn. It disappeared, but it caused no splash, made no ripples. It was as if the bird had become one with the water, rather than sinking beneath its surface."

The rain heron makes explicit what to the alienated children of capitalism has often been hidden, too implicit to see in our urban worlds, and these were the most delightful parts of the book for me. They are what I most thirst for. The rain heron is a bird that looks just like a heron, only bigger, only bluer, only made out of rain. An elemental made manifest. Like Life Itself. When a young boy tries to grab it, he feels "no feathers – only a sensation of cold liquid, of wetness, of running ice". The bird sends heat upon the land of those who try to harness her, pecks out their eye. But then one person finally does capture it, as humans are wont or forced to do, caging the uncageable and covering its cage with oil-soaked canvas, to trap what should be free.

The narrative focus shifts to several different characters throughout the story. But it's the land, overlaid throughout and wrapping round the story that make this novel special. A certain mystery pervades the tale because of it, turning the world into something else other than simply something to mine, to plunder, to build shopping centres on. Not just an Insta backdrop but something alive, its own self, woven deeply into the weft and warp of all our lives. Something complex, alive, deeper than our measuring and categorising, which for most of our history has surrounded our consciousness both as mother and as fearsome destructor. And which we are now being forced to re-engage with on its own terms rather than our masturbatory visions of endless growth. Our home stretches far beyond our narrowed conceptions of linearity. William Blake described our modern thinking well: "For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the.narrow chinks of his cavern."

This book left behind it a freshness, somehow. A freshness that is the opposite of fragmented tweets and people going hungry while farmers pour out millions of wasted litres of milk to the ground in service to a machine that has never made so little sense as it does now.

The freshness comes from a deep remembrance of our connection to a world that demands our allegiance as re-rounding people reconnecting to her and letting the way we live and the stories we tell be moulded by her.

As the old system burns around us, showing its deficiencies like never before, we are going to need all the strength and beauty and sanity that comes from this connection we can get.

A masterful non-linear swirl of a story, which left me stunned each time the pieces of the narrative were revealed and clicked into place.
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The early parts of the narrative felt like short stories, separate narratives taking place in the same world. While I was mesmerized by each, it was only as they all fell together and built into this crescendo of a quest-narrative in the latter part that I felt it really hit its stride. The stories that build to this collective narrative have a fable-vibe with an environmental edge - the rain heron is a creature wielding powers over the crop yields and rainfall and other elements in this country. Other mythic creatures and their “powers” are introduced in an ocean setting, and we start to see signs of the human world attempting to control this natural magic of sorts. While unnamed, there is a familiar feel to the settings which is brimming with both a celebration of the natural world and the nightmare of it being held at ransom by the politics and whims of mankind. So much subtlety and cleverly crafted imagery - this would be a fabulous read to unpack with a bookclub!
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Arnott is truly a master storyteller and one of the most unique writers I’ve come across internationally - his storytelling is vivid and the world he writes is magic and familiar all at once.
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Many thanks to Text for a review copy.

“Daniel thought about what he knew of rain herons – how in the stories they were associated with rainfall, abundance and harvests, but also with floods and destruction and death.”

The story opens with a starving farmer. Starving literally. It seems whatever she decides to do with her land, plant crops, raise livestock, fails. She tells us she has forgotten what it is like to go to bed unhungry. She is neither lazy nor unskilled, yet all her attempts at producing something, anything, are unsuccessful. The farmer has endured this for six long years, six years since her parents died and left her the farm.

Then one day there was a violent storm and the farmer was thought to have perished, somewhere within its violence and destruction. But when the storm subsided, she was found by a group of teenagers hanging in a tree, alive, with what appeared to be a ghostly heron standing vigil over her scarecrow strewn body.

Since that storm, the farmer's fortunes changed. Her crops not only grew, they prospered, wheat and rice growing in abundance. The animals no longer died, were no longer sickly, they were a picture of health, bursting with energy. The farm was so successful that the farmer became rich.

Over time her farm became the most successful in the valley. The farmer was a woman loved by all and she shared her new wealth around the valley and community. And on cloudless nights people said they could see the great ghostly heron flying above her fields.

Everybody was happy. Everybody but the son of her closest neighbour. With this son, jealously reared its ugly head. As with most jealous people he thought only of himself, forgetting the six years that the farmer had endured before her luck changed and the heron appeared. He and his father had been suffering since the storm and all the son could think of was that it was not fair.

He knew that it was the heron that had brought the good fortune to the farmer and he knew where the heron roosted. The same oak tree where the farmer was found. He decided to kill the heron, mistakenly thinking that this would somehow save his father’s farm. However, the son was dealing with something he did not understand and payed the price.

The son was found the next day with hideous injuries. His eyes having been gouged out. The heron disappeared and an intense heatwave descended on the valley destroying everybody’s crops.

This first part of the story is used to introduce the reader to the rain heron. Establish that it is very real, not just a myth, and what it is capable of. It’s a wonderful little narrative of it’s own, which leads into the main story.

The first part of the story takes place in a dystopian future where a coup has taken place and many people have fled the cities. One of these people is Ren. After escaping the city, Ren had been living tough for five years, in the mountains. Starvation and malnutrition plagued her every day. She lost count of the number of times and different ways she nearly perished. Ren had almost given up, given in to the mountain, acknowledging it would take her life, when she met Barlow and his son. After their initial meeting, Ren and Barlow work out a system of battering and trading, enabling Ren with supplies and skills to survive.

One day a group of soldiers arrive, and we eventually learn they are looking for the rain heron. It is here that we meet the true protagonist of the novel. Lieutenant Harker, and what an incredible character Arnott has given us.

The narrative will then jump back in time for part two, and this part of the book is used to fill the reader in on Harker’s background and childhood, however again, like the first part of the book, this part’s narrative is strong enough to stand alone as a tale in it’s own right. Also, like part one, it has the feeling of a fable or parable with a message to be learned.

Part three returns to Ren’s present. Harker and the soldiers determined to find the rain heron.

Part four is told from Harker’s perspective. This is my favourite part of the book, simply because Harker is the most interesting character that I have read this year.

“But I have never been brave. Just strong, and at times, too many times, cruel.”

With Harker, Robbie has created an amazing character. Not a likeable one, in fact it is easier to dislike Harker. She is cruel and yet she is strong and determined. She recognises, acknowledges her cruelty, and knows that she has performed despicable acts throughout her life. And yet, she also retains a hint of kindness. An urge to do the right thing, and we see glimpses of this through her thoughts and conversations in this final part of the novel.

As with “Flames” Arnott’s flare for writing mesmerising poetic prose, especially in describing the natural world, its storms, the fauna and flora, is found, at times, it seems on every page. And although the country where this tale unfolds is never given, the narrative not needing one. The mention of marsupials, eucalypt trees, droughts and storms, give the location a very antipodean feel.

This is a magical wonderful book. 5 Stars!

Thankyou to Text Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC.

As a big fan of Robbie Arnott's 2019 debut novel, Flames, I was really excited to hear that he has a new release in 2020 - The Rain Heron.
Like Flames, this novel uses magical realism, entwining landscape, mythological influences and totemic animal-spirits reminiscent of Australian indigenous culture to create powerful metaphors. However, this is a much darker novel, frequently depicting and exploring the ripples created by violence - between humans, human to animal, animal to human and human to environment. It also employs a more traditional narrative arc than Flames.
After a short prologue introducing the concept of the mythical rain heron, he first three parts of the novel are told from the perspectives of Ren, Zoe and Daniel, respectively.
Ren lives in nature on a forested mountainside, sheltering from an outside world suffering from climate change and resultant political upheaval. Her solitary existence is shattered when a military unit arrive, charged with capturing the elusive (or mythical?) rain heron. The dystopian world depicted brought to my mind John Marsden's classic 'Tomorrow, When the War Began".
Zoe and her aunt live on the harsh southern coast, where they live a precarious lifestyle harvesting precious squid ink in the surrounding ocean waters. It was this part of the novel that I found enthralling, and that most recalled to my mind the magic of Flames. The author's depiction of the (imaginary) process used to extract the ink from giant squid, without apparently harming the animal, is simultaneously confronting, captivating and almost erotic. There are shades of "secret women's business" around this episode and while the denouement is shocking, it is also important in foreshadowing future events depicted in the book.
Daniel is a reluctant army medic, conscripted to the unit tasked with capturing the rain heron. Following the disastrous events depicted at the close of Part 1, Part 3 takes up the narrative from his perspective. He travels with what remains of his unit across a changing landscape, with a view to completing their mission. The rain heron has become a menacing presence, dominating the thoughts and emotions of those with whom it has come in contact.
In the final part of the novel, the characters move towards a type of resolution, with each other and with the natural world.
Arnott's prose is lyrical and original, rich in symbolism. His stories have a fable-like quality and his depictions of the natural world are mesmerising. I will be thinking about The Rain Heron for some time.
My thanks to the author, Text Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an ARC of this title. #NetGalley #TheRainHeron #RobbieArnott #TextPublishing

If anyone had concerns about Robbie Arnott suffering from difficult-second-novel-syndrome, if there is such a thing, then don't worry. The Rain Heron is every bit as good as Flames, and some readers may even find it to be better, with a more comfortable (i.e. traditional) structure and storytelling arc than his debut. I loved it.

The first part of the story is essentially a parable. Set in an agricultural area, we are introduced to the rain heron and come to understand that it can control climate, and with that, also control the fortunes of people. The action then moves to the mountains, where Ren, a middle-aged woman, has been living as a hermit for 5 years, escaping from her family, the coastal city where they once lived and loved, and most importantly from the coup. For this unnamed country has been brought to its knees by a ruthless military. Ren's contact with the outside world is minimal, so when she becomes aware of a military troop on the mountain, she goes to great lengths to escape their notice. What she hasn't bargained on though, is that this troop has an exceptional leader, Lieutenant Harker, and the whole time Ren has been evading the soldiers, they have been setting her up to draw her in. Harker wants Ren's help with their mission - to capture the rain heron. But the rain heron is just a mythical creature, isn't it?

I can't think of a writer in recent years who excites me more than Robbie Arnott. His ability to write landscapes and the environment and the creatures that inhabit it, is unsurpassed. Coupled with a brilliant imagination, he creates scenes that will stay in my mind forever. For example, the squid inking scene is something completely alien to me, but I could just picture it so clearly and I'm sure it's now imprinted on my brain for life.

‘A farmer lived, but not well.’

In an unnamed country, the children hear about the rain heron, associated with both abundance and destruction. Landscape and climate provide the setting for this novel: three apparently separate stories set in fields, forested mountains, and the ocean. A balance with nature undermined and then destroyed by greed,
followed by tragedy.

‘Soldiers have come to the village.’

Somewhere in a country devastated by a coup, Ren lives on the forested slopes. She survives by hunting and trading and trying to forget. But soldiers arrive. They are in search of a myth, of a means of control. They have heard of the rain heron. They want to capture it.

‘Men want things. They hear about something and pretty soon they’re convinced it belongs to them.’

Gradually, the separate stories are drawn together. Ren’s resistance is overcome, Lieutenant Zoë Harkness gets what she is looking for, medic Daniel tries to help. But this is the beginning of a story not the end.

This is Mr Arnott’s second novel, and I love it. It is magical, both in scope and execution. If I try to analyse it, break it into components, explain what works and why, I’ll destroy the magic with logic. Read it for the beautiful descriptions, the use of language, the possibility that the natural world might survive despite us.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Text Publishing for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

“Above her the sky was dark and clear, a navy sheet shot through with stars, and with fuzzy clarity she remembered that she loved the mountain. The scrubbed, endless sky; the sweet-clearing scent; the tossing wind and the bending trees and the high peaks and the running, freezing glassiness of the streams.”

The Rain Heron is the second novel by award-winning Australian author, Robbie Arnott. In their youth, the children of this country hear the story of the rain heron. They learn that the rain heron is “associated with rainfall, abundance and harvests, but also with floods and destruction, sometimes death.” When they grow up, they realise, of course, that it’s only a fairy tale. Unless they saw it for themselves.

“Its blue-grey feathers were so pale, they claimed later, that they could see straight through the bird. Its body was pierced by strands of dusky light, and the tree was clearly visible directly behind its sharp, moist beak.”

Barlow has warned Ren that soldiers are coming to the mountain, her place of refuge for five years now. She keeps a low profile, tries to stay under their radar; but when the moment arrives, she knows what they want and, gradually, she understands that her defiance is futile against their concerted campaign of methodical disintegration of resistance.

Medic Daniel resented being drafted into the army from medical school, unaware he had been chosen for his capacity for kindness, but feels a fierce loyalty to his squad, particularly their leader, Lieutenant Harkness. “She was cold, yes, but she was also smart and merciful and, with one recent notable exception, nonviolent.”

Her “uncanny nous for strategy, her nose for manipulation. She had moulded them into ambushers, infiltrators, outflankers. By the end of the coup they were primarily being used for shadow missions, spilling little blood but achieving significant victories. Minimal fuss or collateral damage.”

Their latest action, though, he questions: the reasons, their methods, and casualties and the ultimate results. “The generals want it because they heard it existed, and they’re in charge. Maybe they think it will make them look powerful.” The world is already in upheaval. What have they planned for this magical creature?

Arnott’s second novel is part-myth with a hint of paranormal, part-admonitory tale, set in a credible dystopia, mere steps from today’s world, where some rationalise questionable behaviour as following orders or simply by entitlement. The inclusion of the symbiotic squid ink harvest is a fascinating touch. Arnott gives the reader gorgeous prose, rich and lyrical; this and the quality of story itself will likely forgive the lack of speech marks for most readers. Utterly mesmerising.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Text Publishing.

A spellbinding eco-fable, The Rain Heron delivers a powerful message about the human need to control and subdue the natural world.

Like Arnott’s debut Flames, his new novel is rooted in the landscape and the climate, but this work is subtler, more serious and controlled. Once again Arnott displays a gift for inventing myths that feel ancient. In The Rain Heron these myths are drenched in rain and seawater. As in a parable, the country is not named, but it has all the hallmarks of a climate-changed Australia.

The first half of the novel delivers three seemingly unconnected stories, set with reverent wonder in the fields, the forest and the ocean respectively. Each of the tales unspools hypnotic and beguiling, then slowly descends into terror.

The second half unites these parts into essentially a road-trip narrative, with greater focus on the human characters. While not quite as magical as the first half, it remains compelling to the end. It was only when I finished reading that I realised I had been expecting the heron to feature more prominently than it did, that there would be a climactic reckoning, but the novel’s ending is a gentler, reflective one.

Arnott’s lush, wondrous, fabulist approach to writing about the natural environment makes this story feel at once timeless and immediate. I’m officially a fan.

I wish to thank Robbie Arnott, Text Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced copy of The Rain Heron in exchange for an honest review.

This is a wonderfully imagined and exquisitely written story; Robbie Arnott has great skill and imagination. Flames was such an enthralling debut, The Rain Heron is different and it is equally as good.

The story revolves around three characters. Ren is living in solitude in a beautifully described forest where she leads a largely self-sufficient lifestyle with minimal assistance from one person, Barlow a friend who barters goods.. Zoe is a soldier, a leader who is tasked with a mission and pursues it with relentless determination. And there is a bird, a preternatural powerful bird, a legend throughout history, capable of delivering prosperity and valuable as the changing climate lays waste to agricultural enterprises. Magical realism also occurs through a special relationship with cephalopods. There is love within the pages, a love of nature and love between people. There is also greed and violence and there is justice.

I loved this story as I loved Flames, I wish I could have taken longer to read it, I couldn’t put it down and now I have to wait for Robbie Arnott to write another. I think there’ll be awards for this great Australian literature, highly recommend.