With poetic prose and a dark ambiguous tone, Redder Days whilst not being a 5 star read for me was enjoyable enough that I want to read more from Sue Rainsford.

Redder Days, by Sue Rainsford
Published: Now.
Redder Days is an eerie tale about two twins trapped on a commune, waiting for the world to end. Anna and Adam have been left behind by other cult members, including their own mother, and are trying to make sense of the world without sane guidance. Koan, their relentless and misogynistic leader, uses cruel techniques to control Adam, and Anna desperately tries to protect him, whilst being aware that he is losing his grip on reality. They have both been conditioned to believe that anything red is bad and can be fatal to those that get close to it. It is a haunting story, and despite the sometimes-confusing narratives, it is powerful. I love how Rainsford describes the barren landscape in which they live. The trees weep, and the shoreline is desolate. I enjoyed it, but feel that the narrative proved perplexing in places. Would highly recommend to fans of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood.

Rainsford's writing is really beautiful, but opaque; so I was fascinated by this book, but I didn't always really understand what was happening. I adored her debut, Follow Me to Ground, and this wasn't quite as effective for me; too many points of view, maybe? They were all almost equally confusing, which distracted me from really caring much about any of the characters. I kept hoping that it would all pull together at the end but I didn't feel as though it did.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free copy of this book! Redder Days is an atmospheric, stream-of-consciousness style dystopian read at its finest; the imagery is horrific and downright surreal and probably the strongest point of the book for me. Rainsford does an excellent job of capturing the fear of the ‘redness’ and I enjoyed the dipping back and forth between characters and unravelling what was really happening. I didn’t mind the ambiguous narration and felt it lended to the book, however I think some characters bled into one another and became quite unmemorable, while some chapters and scenes felt unnecessary and lacked follow up. With some tight editing I think Redder Days could have had major potential but as the plot felt so scantly strung I struggled to read along and remain invested. Nonetheless I loved the writing style and will look out for more from this author.

First of all - thank you to Random House and Net Galley for the ARC in return for the honest review.

And honestly, this will probably be one of the shortest reviews I've ever written. I simply... don't know what to say about this book.

Let's start with the blurb:

"Twins Anna and Adam live in an abandoned commune in a volatile landscape where they prepare for the world-ending event they believe is imminent. Adam keeps watch by day, Anna by night. They meet at dawn and dusk.

Their only companion is Koan, the commune's former leader, who still exerts a malignant control over their daily rituals. But when one of the previous inhabitants returns, everything Anna and Adam thought they knew to be true is thrown into question.

Dazzling, strange and incredibly moving, Redder Days is a stunning exploration of the consequences of power wielded by the wrong hands, the emotional impact of abandonment, and the resilience of the human spirit in the most hopeless of situations."

The book is shelved under 'horror', which is appropriate in my opinion, as it plays with our innate fear of the unknown. For example, what the Red actually is, remains inconclusive, though many indicators suggest it's a disease of some kind. I think.

The reader follows multiple points of view, mainly the twins', but there's a few of them - Koan, and pieces together the shards of the plot to figure out what led to the current state of affairs, what is going on right now, and what is the possible way forward.

And here we're coming to the tricky bit as to why I'm not sure what to say about the book - there are plenty of questions posed by "Redder days", but the answers are scarce.

In itself, it's not a bad thing. After all, as a reader, there's nothing worse than being spoon-fed every bit of information and having no room for speculation and free-form thinking.

However, Sue Rainsford went to the other extreme - I felt like the room for speculation is the size of a hangar for a Dreamliner, and the information given are on the post-its scattered over it.

I don't think I ever referred to reviews as soon as I finished the book. However, on this occasion, I needed to check if other readers were on the same page as me, or was I alone feeling the plot went right above my head.

In the end, it left me without answers. Any answers. Where is the book happening? When is the book happening? What is the Red? Was the theme of incest needed at all?

I thought hard of how to describe "Redder days". The best I can come up with is that this book reads a bit like poetry.

The prose is deliberately disjointed. As if to throw you off the path to discovering what is going on, and whether there's hope. It does seem fitting with the overarching cult vibes, though in conjunction with multiple POVs, the plot, the characters, and the message slipped through my fingers.

The writing is beautiful, and Rainsford's uniquely odd word choices create an excellent atmosphere where reality is shrouded in mystery and readers are free to make their own conclusions regarding it.

I would recommend it to those who love dark literary books that masterfully use confusion and atmosphere to drive their themes.

Dark, unsettling and enigmatic

“We had yet to see how it unfurled inside our own species.
How it impacted the two-legged and carnal. A glimmer of puce in woman’s eye, a child’s back with its fuzz of copper fur. Biological ripples that spoke to an interior horror”

Redder days is set in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world where men, animals, vegetation and all living organisms seems to be plagued by the Red. Two twins, Anna and Adam, live alone in an isolated dwelling after the community, including their mother, abandoned them. The only one remaining with them is Koan, the once charismatic guru/leader who exercised control over the community with his insights and prophecies. These include the malignancy of the Red, the need to abate whatever is touched by it, including infants, the coming of a redemptive Storm and the rituals of purifications. He exercises forms of control over women and births. But is all he says true? The return of one of the members might make us see things in a different light.
This is an immersive, unsettling and enigmatic read. We are immersed in a world where nature is ominous and strangely alive, woods are living entities engulfing humans, and alliances with animals seem possible.
Redder Days explores a number of interesting and timely themes: one is the blind faith expressed by the community, the desperate search for beliefs in times of uncertainty and power that exploits people’s fears and anxieties. It is also a novel about ecological disruption and a feminist text about how the need to control disease is associated with the need to control the female body. There is also a focus on reactions to the experience of horror, reactions to the breakdown this disease triggers, and the need to escape and atone. It is indeed an excellent study of horror and I found it useful to read it with Kristeva’s essay on horror and abjection in mind.
Redder days is told by different voices, so that we have partial versions and never know exactly which versions of reality are reliable, as if we ourselves were plunged into this world. The reader must hunt for clues and draw his own conclusions, and this experience can feel disorienting. What makes this novel fantastic is Rainsford’s immensely evocative visionary writing, the powerful world building, the eerily disturbing imagery and the female subtext. Definitely a unique accomplishment.

I am grateful to the publisher for an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Redder Days is another nuanced magic realist book from the author of Follow Me to Groud. While not as immediatly gratifying as that debut, Redder Days boasts a striking premise, sharp imagery and spare haunting language. it took me a while to get into it but once the book moves to the past and starts exploring what has led up to this post-apocalyptic world it becomes absolutely engrossing.

We tend to think of horror as sharp edge, brutal and ugly. But there is often a beauty to horror that people forget. Nightmares pull at our subconscious raise our human fears and give us a chance to discuss them. Mary Shelley examines science and death in Frankenstein. Shirley Jackson explores the shattering of minds beautifully in her work such as the Haunting of Hill House - horror I think can be troublingly beautiful. In Redder Days Sue Rainsford takes environmental collapse and an imploding cult to paint an eerie picture of secrets and survival that led to a memorable reading experience.

The earth is failing whales beach themselves en masse; jelly fish populations are dying, and a new contagion is sweeping through humanity turning parts of the body red, changing them mentally as well as physically. Two medical professionals Matthew and Koan feel the long-awaited end of the world is coming and to survive create a strange outpost on the site of an eternally burning mine. Over the years they develop rituals and await the coming of the final Storm that will take the old world away. But the numbers within the population decline and now it is an old reclusive Koan and two young teenagers named Adam and Anna who remain – keeping the faith burning and being forever wary of intruders carrying ‘the Red’ that could infect them.

This is an ambitious tale that doesn’t hold prisoners we bounce between primarily the four main characters and their memories of life before the settlement and the current time they are in. Rainsford from the off creates a world of colour, sound and sensation as the characters describe the ruined world they inhabit. We get pulled into daily rituals and familiarise ourselves with their worldview the need to cleanse with salt, the prayers to the end of the world – we walk several minds in these people’s shoes so even if we don’t sympathise with them at least we understand them. Unsurprisingly, the colour red and all its variants seeps into the narrative and is forever seen as a sign of infection and danger. We see in particular how deeply Adam and Anna now hold themselves to this faith and it is a troubling sense of belief they carry as well as a worry over what actually happened to their absent mother Eula. They are the scariest characters especially as we see them quite happy to kill potential carriers and then purge themselves of any infection in line with their faith. This is a cult and behind it all is Koan now this lost voice forever locked away from the world but his influence lives on in the two children. Very quickly the reader will get the feeling that the adults were keeping secrets from the children for their own agendas.

In a series of flashbacks, we see the callous Koan and Matthew struggle with the events that caused them to flee and see neither were particularly holy people – often instead dismissive of the wider world and struggling with their own family secrets. For them the end of the world gives them an opportunity for power and creating the world in their image. But as time passes, we see it’s not enough. In particular we see the dynamics of the settlement shifted with Matthew and his partner Tabatha and the arrival of the mercurial Eula who doesn’t take to Koan’s orders kindly. As we progress through the story, we see that these relationships and tensions were pulling the group slowly apart. Rainsford keeps these events opaque and there is a lot to be inferred though half told secrets and references that as the tale progresses the reader pieced together. The highlight of this is we get this oppressive sense of humans trapped in one place and it is being around these humans all the time that creates the divides. As well as the threat of ‘the red’ there is this feeling of infection of the mind that also carries throughout the novel via the adult’s polluted ideas and even Anna and Adam may not be safe from their family’s past catching up from them.

All of which is hugely impressive start t the tale and it makes for a fast and initially very effective read as we pick up all these sensations and impressions of what has been going on. However, I found the final scenes were letting the narrative down. It is always tricky talking about the finale of a book but for me I think despite all this set-up the final revelations and actions all felt very by the book with no surprises (and one scene of near incest that didn’t feel necessary either to the plot) At this point I felt we moved away from the poetical nightmare horror I’d been enjoying and was instead in very familiar ‘cult goes wrong’ territory - I think more of the environmental scenes could have been used at this point so it felt a bit of a missed opportunity after such a promising two thirds of the tale.

Despite that I found this a very compelling read that gave me a truly unusual reading experience and Rainsford’s use of language and imagery was both beautiful and disturbing. I was just hoping for a little bit more to land all these ideas at the end. I think fans of literary horror will still find quite a bit to enjoy and I’ll be looking out for more from Rainsford in the future.

I could tell this book wasn't for me within the first few pages. Despite the beautiful writing, and the excellent atmosphere of Redder Days I found myself struggling to discern the point. Perhaps books where reality is shrouded in mystery, where you can't tell what's actually happening, aren't for me. The plot and characters slipped through my fingers and I felt no connection to either. The strength of Redder Days lies within its themes, but without anything to drive the story forward, I was left feeling unsatisfied. I'd recommend this to people who love dark literary books that aim to create confusion and atmosphere to drive its themes.

3.5 stars rounded up.

After absolutely loving Follow Me To Ground last year, I was very eager to get my hot little hands on Rainsford's new novel. I devoured Redder Days, but despite that, I was left not entirely satiated.

Don't get me wrong, Rainsford can WRITE. Her prose is just as beautiful here as in Follow Me To Ground. There's something almost intoxicating about the way she writes that makes her books nearly impossible to put down. It's whimsical and enchanting but dark and complex too. She also has a way of connecting her characters to the nature and world around them that I haven't seen before, so that the world isn't so much a separate character in the story as it is an extension of the human characters. It really is gorgeous.

But that glorious writing could only take me so far. I struggled with the ambiguity of the plot and found myself wanting more. The characters were a bit flat for me and, for a novel told from different perspectives, their voices weren't as unique as I would have liked. I think if I'd read Redder Days before her previous novel, I might have appreciated it more. Follow Me To Ground used the same kind of ambiguity in a much more satisfying way. With Redder Days, it felt less ambiguous and more incomplete. I would have loved more insight into the red and the 21 years between the start of the red and the main story here.

Beautifully written, but I wish there had been a bit more meat to the story. ⭐⭐⭐✨

At some unspecified time (presumably) in the future, twins Anna and Adam live in the remains of the commune where they were brought up. Their mother left when she felt they were old enough to survive without her, and the other commune members have slipped away over the years. The twins' only companion is Koan, once the leader of the group holding a fierce control over the lives of everyone, but now much diminished, physically and mentally, by age.

The twins' lives follow a pattern of rituals, preparing for an expected cataclysmic end of the world, quenching the fires that burn from an underground mine, and keeping the area free from people and animals who show signs of the 'redness'. When former commune-members return, it becomes apparent that what the twins have been brain-washed into believing might not be true ...



Redder Days is a disturbing, dystopian novel, one in which a virulent disease is sweeping the world, endangering humanity, while society as we know it appears to have completely collapsed to be replaced by small communes, subject to their own rules. Against this backdrop, Sue Rainsford looks at at the undue influence one man can have over a group of willing followers, and how he manipulates and abuses his power.

The writing is dark, disturbing, uncomfortable with the story unfolding through a number of first-person narratives (not all reliable) set in different time-frames. This makes things a little difficult to follow at first. The reader is dropped straight into this strange world with no explanation, and I feel that having read it once, I'd like to go back, specifically to the early chapters, as I think I missed a lot of nuances. A lot is left for the reader to decide for themselves, particularly about the motivation of characters - for example how much did Koan deliberately mislead others? Was he acting maliciously or was he just mistaken? It's certainly a book which left me intrigued, and wanting to read more by the author.

Redder Days is the sophomore offering from Rainsford and is an equally unsettling story of human endurance, corrupted power and the powerful influence both people and words can have over our thoughts and actions. Set within an abandoned commune that twenty-one-year-old twins Anna and Adam were born into, the siblings prepare for a prophesied world-ending event, until a previous inhabitant returns and forces them to question everything they were taught to believe by their enigmatic messiah Koan. The fall of civilization begins with a man purring like a cat before dropping stone dead in front of his wife. And this isn’t an isolated case. Soon an epidemic of “redness” is spreading across the world, changing people and animals in fatal, horrifying ways. The twins live in a strange, volatile landscape surrounded by derelict cottages and dense woodland where they perform devotions to the event they believe is imminent. Once members of a functioning commune, based on top of a disused mine, which has now been abandoned, they must now protect themselves from the condition by implementing extreme social distancing measures, practising good hygiene and preparing for the fatal, world-enveloping event they believe is coming—an event which they call The Storm. While vulnerable Adam sleeps all night and tends to domestic tasks during the day, the more independent Anna sleeps all day and keeps watch over the woods and coastline at night. They are so indoctrinated that even when the rest of the group, including their mother, became disillusioned and left two years ago when the predicted day of The Storm passed without incident, they carried on following scientist Koan’s ”guidance”.

Anna also visits with doctor Koan, their frail former leader who is rapidly deteriorating, and whose old journals she reads for glimpses of the truth he worked to keep hidden. The pattern of their life together is largely unbroken, until departed members of the commune start returning and the twins are forced re-evaluate all they assumed to be true. This is scintillating, refreshingly original and profoundly disturbing literary sci-fi horror with a tension that is palpable throughout and sumptuously rich imagery. It's an unnerving read with a creeping sense of dread, and a sinister tale with earthy prose and eviscerating detail that questions our preconceptions of predator and prey and the consequences of unchecked desire. Told across shifting timelines and perspectives, Redder Days explores the aftermath of abandonment, how any relationship can turn toxic, and what might cause a group of people to long for the end of the world. It explores some very dark topics such as cults, incest, manipulation, control, mental illness, delusion, misogyny, brainwashing, indoctrination and identity. The nightmarish post-apocalyptic world feeds into an exploration of the devastating damage that can be done when power falls into the wrong hands, and I loved the juxtaposition between the lush, poetic prose and the disturbing happenings which worked exceptionally well and added a rich contrast to the narrative. This is a strange, evocative and visceral tale that drops you right in at the deep end and there are lots of aspects you must unravel for yourself; Rainsford leaves lots of the story open to interpretation and subjectivity which will not be for everyone but I thought it was ingenious. Highly recommended.

My thanks to Random House U.K. Transworld Publishers for the invitation to read an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Redder Days’ by Sue Rainsford in exchange for an honest review.

I had enjoyed Sue Rainsford’s debut novel ‘Follow Me to Ground’ and so was excited to read this second work of literary horror with its dystopian overtones. I was also intrigued by the opening quote by Ana Mendieta, an artist whose work in nature I adore.

In respect to its plot: twins Anna and Adam live in an abandoned commune awaiting an imminent world-ending event. Adam keeps watch by day, Anna by night. They are constantly on the lookout for people or animals infected with the ‘redness’. Their only companion is Koan, the commune's former leader who still exerts a malignant control over their lives. However, when one of the previous inhabitants returns, everything Anna and Adam thought they knew to be true is thrown into question.

Rainsford moves between a number of first person narrative voices in a lyrical style. Stream-of-consciousness is always a bit hit and miss with me and here I just floundered and was left feeling confused.

I can see that I am definitely in the minority with respect to ‘Redder Days’ but I concluded that sometimes weird and experimental works for me and sometimes it just doesn’t.

Reading this book was an incredible experience, dealing with Power, wrong and right and an incredible worldbuilding! The story is intriguing and the characters wonderfully complex!

I went into Redder Days totally blind, having requested a copy purely for a cover click, and because I knew a pal had recently been approved for the eArc too. One chapter in and it's safe to say I had already became obsessed. I need to read everything Rainsford ever releases because her writing and storytelling really is captivating.

Redder Days, a dystopian novel primarily following twins Adam and Anna, did leave me a little confused in places, but honestly I didn't even care, I was just along for the journey needing to know what was going to happen next. The novel is written beautifully, potentially lacking a little backstory to give the more rounded understanding of the HOW and maybe even the WHY for the reader, but then that makes it all the more intriguing. It's pretty unputdownable., you should give it a read.

4.5 stars, rounded to 5.

Thanks to NetGalley, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers and Sue Rainsford for an eArc copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you, NetGalley for the ARC!

I found Koan to be the most interesting character here. The weird religion he put together, while still being a scientist who saw this coming (and who was really good at his job) coupled with his misogyny makes it a really interesting read. He goes from being a tough leader to someone who seems to be delusional (and really really messed up in the head).

Ngl though, this was weird. While the imagery was haunting and it definitely isn't like a lot of other dystopian novels, it was also really slow and really confusing.

Having loved Sue Rainsford's Follow Me To Ground, I was eager to start Redder Days. This novel follows the lives of twins Anna and Adam after their mother leaves them in Rainsford's characteristically poetic style. I loved the lyrical, otherworldly atmosphere Rainsford creates as the twins deal with the threat of 'the red' - it's an apocalyptic cult-like novel but not like I've read before. Sometimes the surreal strangeness can be difficult to unpick, but I let the unsettling, abstract descriptions wash over me and it was an enjoyable experience. The chapters from Koan's diary were successful in helping fill in the gaps of how the community and 'the red' began. Sue Rainsford is a writer I'm eager to follow, and Redder Days is a novel I'd like to revisit for a closer understanding of the subtleties I missed.

Thanks to Netgalley and Transworld for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Twins Anna and Adam live in an abandoned commune in a volatile landscape where they prepare for the world-ending event they believe is imminent. Adam keeps watch by day, Anna by night. They meet at dawn and dusk. Their only companion is koan, the commune's former leader, who still exerts a malignat control over their daily ritules. But when one of the previous inhabitants returns, everything Anna and Adam know to be true was thrown into question.

Anna and Adam are preparing for the world to end. They live in an abandoned commune. Set in a dustopian world where a disease called redness is contaminationg nature and people. Koan makes his community believe everything he tells them. This is quite a disturbing and shockingly weird quck read. It covers: child death, incest, physical and mental abuse.

I would like to thank #Netgalley, #RandomHouseUK #TransworldPublishers and the author #Sur
rainsford for my ARCin exchange for an honest review.

From the blurb, we know that twins Anna and Adam live in an abandoned commune. The only other person living their is Koan, the commune's former leader.

They appear to be awaiting the end of the world, while having already survived a potentially world-changing event in the form of the mysterious Red.

As with her debut novel, Follow Me To Ground, Sue Rainsford drops you into the dystopian world she has created without giving you all the facts. The joy of reading is in figuring out what the hell is going on and in whose version of events you can trust.

Redder Days by Sue Rainsford is lyrical, strange, atmospheric, surprisingly moving, and utterly compelling. I wanted to devour it in one sitting, but I also didn't want it to end.

This is a weird and unusual tale about twins in a strange, dystopian world. A very short read but something a bit different and thought provoking.