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Short Fiction Friday: The Myth of Rain

The Myth of Rain by Seanan McGuire

[no synopsis availabe]

Seanan McGuire is better know to my under her pseudonym Mira Grant, with which she wrote some very creepy horror books. A while ago I read a short story in the Dead Man's Hand anthology about wasps which was part of her InCryptid stories. It was different that what I read in the Mira Grant books, in a very good way. Now when I came across The Myth of Rain I readily jumped the occasion to read it and once again I am amazed. 

The story of The Myth of Rain picked up in a way that it readily piques your interstest. It begins with the story of a female spotted owl and how their cry is different. Now from this first sentence the story could go any which way. A documentary of sort. Like Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons. Soon you are introduced to Julie, who is on the look out of owls, observing them and capturing them. For a reason, because at the end of the capture she mentions that monsters are coming to the woods. Soon after this confrontation there is a nice breakdown of the current setting. Not everything is as pretty as it once was. The world hasn't exactly moved on, but the greenhouse effect has gotten worse and worse and the climates have changed, for the worse. The rich have tried to move to different places but it all boils down to the same thing, when there was the chance to do something about the climate change nothing was down and now it is all to late.... The area in which Julie is acting is the Pacific Northwest, currently the only place on Earth left to live a decent life. Julie and her fellow friends are activist who are trying to preserve the last bit of wild life for Ark's, yes with these Ark's you know it is a serious business...! 

I really liked the depth that Seanan McGuire put into this story. It's not a story solely about climate change, but also about the Julie, she gets quite an indepth background how she grew up and what her reasons are. this gave a nice emotional touch to the story that makes every element of the "post"-apocalyptic world (insofar you can call the here proposed devestating effects of climate change apocalyptic) sound that much stronger. The ending of the story shows that somethings are meant to stay free and the last sentence really caught me once again: "Maybe someday, our children would see owls in the world again.". I think if you would extrapolate it to our current situation, our climate has changed in the last few years hotter summers, harsher winters and more. It does make you wonder... are we going in this direction?

A wonderful story, don't miss it!

You can read it in Lightspeed Magazine following this link

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