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Long Rain
“★★★★★ Long Rain is brilliant. Great energy, pace & tension."—Goodreads
After a mysterious forty-year downpour drowns most of humanity, an orphaned outcast named Jaxx struggles to survive with other refugees inside a Los Angeles skyscraper encampment barely peeking above the ocean. Tectonic plates shift. Looming clouds spill relentless rain. Tides inch up the decaying high-rises, forcing those from the flooded lower levels to the overcrowded upper floors.
LONG RAIN is Jaxx's account of finding friendships and love under such bleak circumstances, and the secrets he uncovers while exploring a forbidden landmark. His tale also chronicles his recruitment into a last-ditch mission to find the source of the rain—a harrowing adventure through a monstrous expanse of sea and land in hopes of saving the human race.
After a mysterious forty-year downpour drowns most of humanity, an orphaned outcast named Jaxx struggles to survive with other refugees inside a Los Angeles skyscraper encampment barely peeking above the ocean. Tectonic plates shift. Looming clouds spill relentless rain. Tides inch up the decaying high-rises, forcing those from the flooded lower levels to the overcrowded upper floors.
LONG RAIN is Jaxx's account of finding friendships and love under such bleak circumstances, and the secrets he uncovers while exploring a forbidden landmark. His tale also chronicles his recruitment into a last-ditch mission to find the source of the rain—a harrowing adventure through a monstrous expanse of sea and land in hopes of saving the human race.
337 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 31, 2024
About the author
Todd Klick
9 books3 followersTodd Klick is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, and author. Klick is best known for writing the social media horror film Followed, which reached the top of the box office in June of 2020 during the U.S. Covid pandemic drive-in theater resurgence. Before that, Followed won numerous festival awards, including a nomination for Best Original Screenplay for Klick. Todd also authored the non-fiction books Something Startling Happens and Beat By Beat and has published articles in The Huffington Post, MovieMaker Magazine, and The Daily Beast.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 1, 2024
This was brilliant! I was directly absorbed in this post apocalyptic story! Great energy, pace & tension, some good action & adventure! I liked the main character & found myself really wanting them to come out on top in this messed up well developed world! I will look for more by this writer & I do recommend for all that like this genre!
August 21, 2024
Long Rain is a great story that really grips you and immerses you into the dystopian world that Klick has created. I really felt connected to the characters and all the trials and tribulations they had to face for the duration of the story. The scenarios that Klick came up with were really realistic and really helped completely immerse me; and immersion is huge for me as a reader. The story was very well thought out and written well. I thoroughly enjoyed reading and would definitely recommend to my sci fi/dystopia friends!
I received Long Rain as an e-ARC for free, and am offering my honest review voluntarily. Thank you to Todd Klick, wordmundo and BookSirens for the opportunity to read Long Rain.
I received Long Rain as an e-ARC for free, and am offering my honest review voluntarily. Thank you to Todd Klick, wordmundo and BookSirens for the opportunity to read Long Rain.
September 4, 2024
I received a .pdf ARC of Todd Klick's Long Rain from Book Sirens in return for a candid review of the book. Said candid review follows.
Todd Klick's dystopian novel Long Rain is set in what was once Los Angeles County, California, in LR40 or the 40th year of the Long Rain. That said, it's set perhaps 200 years from the reader's ethnographic present in a world where sea level rise has inundated much of the world's surface, only a smattering of cities survive, food is scarce, space is even scarcer in a cluster of high rises whose damp upper stories clear the water's surface and are referred to as "The Tops," families are only allowed one child (if that) on a lottery basis, and mandatory "subtraction" occurs at age 60 at the hands of the governor's strongmen under the direction of an individual known as the Angel of Death. It's a grim world, a la Silo and any such post-collapse literature, and Klick slowly reveals the wider circumstances of The Tops, its governance structure, and how despite attempts to keep a semblance of order, children grow up parentless in overcrowded barracks-style housing, the weak are physically and emotionally victimized, and despite the few who attempt to help one another it's clear that the residents are running out of upper floors to evacuate to in a world where the toxic and monster-laden seas are rising at an ever-accelerating rate. There are an ever-dwindling number of elders who recall the Bright Days and a few of the book's characters hang on their memories of the world the adults have lost and an increasing number of the population has never known.
The action centers on orphaned teenager Jaxx, whose inheritance consists of a box of postcards carefully curated in zip-loc bags by his long-departed mother and the fishing boat, sadness, and shame associated with his father's poor retrieval (unwillingness to cooperate when being collected for subtraction), grief at the loss of a very young child he attempted to parent following his father's death, and a group of friends with whom he works and interacts within the above-water floors of the City National Tower located in what would once have been LA's Financial District, or so he is told. Jaxx has developed a coping mechanism of suppressing all feeling lest any weakness be apparent to others. For instance. when Jaxx finds himself saddened or grieving a loss, he responds by pounding his thigh with a fist until he has created sufficient pain to distract himself. The pleasures in this world are few and far between, but one of Jaxx's biggest pleasures is watching the movies Owen Amsterdam projects on the mold covered walls of the stairwells for the enjoyment of the residents. Jaxx is a loner with few friends, who spends his time largely rereading the few remaining books, watching films, and working his inherited fishing boat, Fear Knot, from which he supplies food to the community as his assigned "task" in society.
Despite the grim scenario, there is so much to like here--allusions to movies real and imagined, friendships and alliances, Jaxx's introspection and kindness, a tight central corps of characters we follow as they attempt an overwhelming task. It's well paced, has strong world-building, the characters are relatable, and it's quite well-written and tightly edited. There are some fun twists along the way that I decline to spoil for readers, but let it suffice to say that Klick brings some new wrinkles to the genre, including what's behind all of this.
Long Rain is a quick and enjoyable read. I knocked it out in an evening. Fans of dystopian fiction will enjoy it quite a lot and it would also make a nice introduction for readers who are new to the genre. Long Rain will doubtless inspire readers to greater appreciation for the simple pleasures of a sunny blue sky and so many other things we often take for granted. My rating is 4-1/2 stars.
Todd Klick's dystopian novel Long Rain is set in what was once Los Angeles County, California, in LR40 or the 40th year of the Long Rain. That said, it's set perhaps 200 years from the reader's ethnographic present in a world where sea level rise has inundated much of the world's surface, only a smattering of cities survive, food is scarce, space is even scarcer in a cluster of high rises whose damp upper stories clear the water's surface and are referred to as "The Tops," families are only allowed one child (if that) on a lottery basis, and mandatory "subtraction" occurs at age 60 at the hands of the governor's strongmen under the direction of an individual known as the Angel of Death. It's a grim world, a la Silo and any such post-collapse literature, and Klick slowly reveals the wider circumstances of The Tops, its governance structure, and how despite attempts to keep a semblance of order, children grow up parentless in overcrowded barracks-style housing, the weak are physically and emotionally victimized, and despite the few who attempt to help one another it's clear that the residents are running out of upper floors to evacuate to in a world where the toxic and monster-laden seas are rising at an ever-accelerating rate. There are an ever-dwindling number of elders who recall the Bright Days and a few of the book's characters hang on their memories of the world the adults have lost and an increasing number of the population has never known.
The action centers on orphaned teenager Jaxx, whose inheritance consists of a box of postcards carefully curated in zip-loc bags by his long-departed mother and the fishing boat, sadness, and shame associated with his father's poor retrieval (unwillingness to cooperate when being collected for subtraction), grief at the loss of a very young child he attempted to parent following his father's death, and a group of friends with whom he works and interacts within the above-water floors of the City National Tower located in what would once have been LA's Financial District, or so he is told. Jaxx has developed a coping mechanism of suppressing all feeling lest any weakness be apparent to others. For instance. when Jaxx finds himself saddened or grieving a loss, he responds by pounding his thigh with a fist until he has created sufficient pain to distract himself. The pleasures in this world are few and far between, but one of Jaxx's biggest pleasures is watching the movies Owen Amsterdam projects on the mold covered walls of the stairwells for the enjoyment of the residents. Jaxx is a loner with few friends, who spends his time largely rereading the few remaining books, watching films, and working his inherited fishing boat, Fear Knot, from which he supplies food to the community as his assigned "task" in society.
Despite the grim scenario, there is so much to like here--allusions to movies real and imagined, friendships and alliances, Jaxx's introspection and kindness, a tight central corps of characters we follow as they attempt an overwhelming task. It's well paced, has strong world-building, the characters are relatable, and it's quite well-written and tightly edited. There are some fun twists along the way that I decline to spoil for readers, but let it suffice to say that Klick brings some new wrinkles to the genre, including what's behind all of this.
Long Rain is a quick and enjoyable read. I knocked it out in an evening. Fans of dystopian fiction will enjoy it quite a lot and it would also make a nice introduction for readers who are new to the genre. Long Rain will doubtless inspire readers to greater appreciation for the simple pleasures of a sunny blue sky and so many other things we often take for granted. My rating is 4-1/2 stars.
September 29, 2024
Loved it! Great characters, thrilling plot, interjections of humor, and a wonderfully delineated dystopian world. There's even an abundance of intriguing callbacks to the "Bright Days" (pre-flood times): Two-Lane Blacktop, Infinite Jest, and even Sierpinski Triangles (look 'em up). I devoured this book during a two-day rainstorm here in upstate New York; the rain added a "soundtrack" of sorts! I enjoyed every moment.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews