The Rain Heron turned out to be everything I don't usually read. Still, I really want to thank the publisher for allowing me to read this new edition of the book. It made me discover a new type of writing that I didn't know I would enjoy.

Let me explain. In The Rain Heron, the pace is slow. We switch between characters without really knowing why. There's a mythical creature that's being chased by military without the reader knowing why. There isn't a lot of action.

Yet, I found the book to be relaxing. I'm not sure what the plot was really about besides the fact that someone want to capture the mythical Rain Heron, but I enjoyed discovering the various character, reflecting at the same time they do, etc.

You should be warned this is a character based story. I thought we would be following a chase for the heron, but it's mostly characters narration, where the reader gets to understand why they are the persons they are now, what brought them around the heron etc.

Mostly, it focuses on the beauty of life, what is really important in life, and reflecting on what you want your life to be. It's kind of a coming-of-age story, that made me feel super serene while reading it!

I'm glad I got out of my reading comfort zone with this. So, if you feel like reading a chill book with a great descriptive, poetry-like, writing style, you might want to give The Rain Heron a chance !

Perfect for people who thought Annihilation was a little too scattered or weird, The Rain Heron takes a stab at showing a world outside of human control, where the environment acts against you without sense or direction, where humanity's hubris has doomed us, and where violence is decisive. Told through the lens of 3 individuals (one being visited twice) centering around ecological disaster and a mystical bird that can stabilize the weather (or bring chaos).

The whole book, it feels like everything has two sides that are equal and opposite and constantly vying for dominance. Each character deals with the cost of brutality or hatred of humanity or just wanting to be left alone warring against a love of nature or a desire for control or common human decency. Most of the story is told at kind of a remove (made more prescient with the lack of quotation marks and mostly third person) with these short, sharp, and brutal scenes of senseless violence that serve to kind of shock the reader into playing closer attention.

The book also deals very interestingly with the flexibility of memory, with each character plagued by the loss of some keen memory. And also the reader gets to know more than the characters as we learn all kinds of secrets that the characters don't think to put together.

So why the 3? I think it's just that this isn't really the kind of book I like. I clung to the violent scenes because it felt like something was finally happening, while the rest of the book was so subdued.

"Above an enormous cliff...a tree-small, stunted, with ancient knots and whorls...at its highest point, in a clawing crown of branches, sat a bird...a heron...it seemed too big, too blue, too alien. Huge and silent, running its long beak through its pale cerulean plumage, water was dripping from the feathers as the bird preened...dove into the tarn...caused no splash, made no ripples...as if the bird had become one with the water."

"A farmer lived, but not well...success and happiness were foreign to her, and she had forgotten what it was like to go to bed unhungry". One day, a black storm...oceans of freezing rain...the unlucky farmer was found, "her body draped over the branches of an old leafless oak...more curious...a huge heron, the color of rain...a languid flap of its wings...came to rest in the crown of the oak, standing over the unlucky farmer, as if on guard." The unlucky farmer prospered and, humbled by lessons learned, shared her new found riches with her community...but...there was a greedy, jealous neighbor. "Nobody had spotted the great heron since the first morning of the heatwave." The farmer went from starvation, to cultivating verdant farmland and raising livestock, to "crop-roasting, pond-parching light." No one in the valley was spared.

Ren was a survivalist, a hermit living in the mountains. After silently observing a kind, seemingly patient man, she offered him milk-cup mushrooms. He responded in kind. He gave her a woolen hat. This set a precedent...a system of barter between Ren and Barlow. Ren depended mainly on foraging and hunting. While resetting a trap, she heard rustling, footsteps, and voices...five soldiers. Could the hunter now be the hunted? Eventually, they found her. Lieutenant Harker, the female commander, reminded Ren that since the coup five years ago, many people had fled their homes. The soldiers were after something nestled in the mountains. "Our orders: come to this mountain to capture the bird...the one that comes from the clouds. The rain heron." Despite Ren's protests that the rain heron was a myth, a fairy tale, her life would hang in the balance. She was forced to comply with these "gun-gripping, fast marching, unsmiling soldiers".

The country's south coast with its beaches of cloud white sand and stark beauty "could not fill stomachs or clothe backs". People lived here for a particular resource found nowhere else. The fishermen employed a "secretive method of harvesting squid ink", an art passed down by villagers for generations. Zoe, an orphan, had watched her aunt harvest ink and anxiously awaited her turn to harvest, regardless of the cost. The squid ink would be sold to people in the North, ink that could also be used to enhance sauces and stews. The squid were treated humanly and returned to the sea after the ink was collected. A northerner walked the docks and wandered onto the pier. "I am here to revitalise the south-sea ink industry. To modernize it...to guarantee its supply".

"The Rain Heron" by Robbie Arnott is an eco-fable with seemingly different narratives that start in a valley, retreat into the mountains, then visit a port city in the south. The effects of a recent coup and the effects of climate change are explored using the myth of the rain heron. The narratives are intricately interwoven as penned masterfully by author Arnott. The strength as well as the frailty of the human spirit is explored. Are past behaviors redeemable? Will scars heal? "The Rain Heron" is a beautiful, mesmerizing tome I highly recommend.

Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux/FSG Originals for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5, rounded down. An imaginative and moving reading experience, which will probably end up being one of my favorites of 2021. Arnott builds an immersive world of near-future ecological disaster, where the seasons and climate have been disordered by human intervention, and a military coup rules the ragged survivors. His descriptions of natural landscapes are vivid and evocative, masterfully painting widescreen panoramas of landscapes-- deep forests, frozen coastlines, bleak deserts-- almost devoid of human presence. This deep naturalism supercharges the novel's fabulistic and magic-realist elements, which are genuinely poetic and unsettling. The allegorical message is subtle and oblique, and Arnott doesn't judge his morally ambiguous characters, so that the final arc of redemption feels genuinely earned. My only quibble was that the novel's sections were more effective as individual, self-contained parables, and that the muted denouement didn't quite deliver the pyrotechnics I was expecting.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and for providing an ARC of this, in exchange for an honest review.</i>

The Rain Heron is a fantastic book that is about strong women living in dangerous times whether from a coup or from climate change, and a mythical bird. It starts out with a fable type of story and then goes into other stories that are all kind of woven together. I absolutely loved it and found it impossible to put down. It is a top ten book of the year for me.

I received this from Netgalley.com.

"As myths merge with reality, both Ren and Zoe are forced to confront what they regret, what they love, and what they fear."

Good story, enjoyable read, incredibly creative. The relationship between Ren and Zoe was both touching and just downright awful. The writing flows well, just enough magical realism to make you think this could really be happening.

4☆

She ch an original and lovely, heartbreaking book. A bit fable, a bit literary fiction, and even the feel of sci fi. Another recent novel with morality tales of climate protection and another I would recommend.

The Rain Heron is unlike anything I've ever read. It is full of myth and the metaphysical. Robbie Arnott's novel is a story about what it means to use nature and capture its limited resources. It is a story with people as interconnected as nature itself. I have to say that this is the perfect book for someone looking to think about our environment and its resources in a different way. Arnott brings the reader along on a journey full of questions about what it means to work with nature and what happens when you try and steal it for your own selfish desires.

This review is based on NetGalley ARC provided in exchange for an honest, unbiased opinion.

Hard one to review. While I liked the story itself and its premise is original, it seems that this book could not decide what it wants to be. First, you get a story of one situation (in 3rd person), and once you're comfortable there, you are abruptly taken to an entirely different story (in 3rd person). Then, it changes again to a 1st POV ... that wasn't established previously. POV changes--totally fine--but imo, not like this.

I still enjoyed the story and would rec it to those who like dystopian stuff (this is kind of dystopian-lite).

Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a copy of this ARC.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott.

Wow, this was a stunning piece of literature.

It's hard to completely put into words why I was so moved by this book. I've never read anything like it, and on paper I don't know that I would have been very interested, but my goodness, I was so into it.

This is a story that slowly circles a "rain heron" which is kind of what it sounds like, a magical bird made of rain. It can help you, but it will also violently attack you if offended. And boy does this story have violence. But it also has long enduring stories, love, devotion, loathing, and sprinkles of redemption throughout. The writing is exquisitely descriptive, I was truly sad when it ended.

This already has hundreds of reviews and ratings, so there's nothing I can add of value. I'll just recommend this for sci-fi and even literary fiction fans.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

i really enjoyed reading this book, the characters were great and I really loved the use of myths and fantasy. I'd be interested in reading more from this author.

The Rain Heron begins with a fable: Heralded by the arrival of flood and black storms, sometimes this mythical bird made of cloud and rain will choose a person to attach to, granting their land the perfect conditions for a harvest of abundance. But like many fables, that of the Rain Heron contains a dark lesson: woe betide he who might seek to harm or exploit this mythical creature out of greed or spite. After this intriguing opener, author Robbie Arnott introduces us to a world gone sideways: Post ecological disaster, post resulting military coup, the residents of this country (most likely Arnott’s native Australia) are forced to make hard choices about survival (whether becoming involuntary conscripts in the military or finding ways to feed oneself while hiding from patrolling soldiers). The people on both sides are hard and impassive, but we eventually learn that everyone has a backstory, no one is the worst thing they have ever done, and while history might explain individual actions, it doesn’t excuse them: we always have a choice, and attempting to control the Rain Heron — to exploit and deplete the Earth for selfish gain — comes at a high price. Arnott’s landscape writing is lush and lyrical, even the “reality” of his post-disaster world has a hint of the fabulous to it, and as ecolit, the lesson of the Rain Heron is one we should all keep close to heart. I enjoyed the writing — from the sentences to the overall effect — very much and think this should be widely read.