War further decimated and desecrated the land. The Rain Never Came, by Lachlan Walter, is the story of two friends living in a desolate, sun-scorched Australia, where it hasn’t rained properly for decades. **This book was reviewed by independent request I’m pleased to report it was significantly different to the version in this book!) ( ) In fact I was in Echuca during the last week of December. This is actually a part of the world I know reasonably well. (As an aside, I was startled while reading the book to discover that some place names (and the geography) are real. One that springs immediately to mind: where did the characters get their water from for survival? While I enjoyed reading the story, and looked forward to seeing what would happen next, there are some questions for the author about this imagined future that could be asked. Seeing a problem from a different angle is always enlightening. The capture of our main characters, and their treatment in a refugee camp was a very clever device, in light of Australia’s well-known policy regarding asylum seekers. There’s a road trip (of sorts) which leads to further intrigue, and the exposure of a long-held secret, the source of some ongoing, but largely unspoken, anger and unhappiness. The use of slang was appropriate and accurate (as it was throughout the book) and the characters were intriguing and largely likeable. It grasped me from the beginning, with the early setting being a dusty country town hosting a game of bush footy. Walter has created in ‘The Rain Never Came’ a dystopian alternative future for Australia, where rains have stopped falling, and society as we know it has broken down. This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.This book came to me through the Library Thing ‘Early Reviewers’ program.

The Rain Never Came by Lachlan Walter