Tome Thursday: Red Hail

Hello everyone!

This one is another book that came straight off BookSirens.

And man, do I love me some free ARCs.

I don't really do them one after another, but I do usually grab one or two per month if nothing else, because let me tell you, they cater to pretty much every reading niche you can think of.

This was one book that I actually found at random through an email they sent me, and I was intrigued enough by the blurb that I picked it up even though I don't usually read that kind of science fiction.

I'll admit, I'm more of a fantasy or history kind of gal.

But every once in a blue moon I'll run into this title or blurb and want to sniff around to nose out what it's all about.

The same happened with Jamie Killen's book, even though I really DON'T read these.

But Red Hail just begged to be read.

I don't think I have anything to suggest as other reads along the same lines as this one, which just goes to show how much I DON'T read these types of books!

So let's just jump straight into Red Hail, shall we?

Straight off the bat I'd point out that the book is divided into two timeliness: one happening in 1960, and one in 2020. I'm not going to jump back and forth between them but instead just focus on one or the other.

1960 first.

A teenager named Anza is having, well, womanly issues (aka she got pregnant and she kind of doesn't want to carry it to term, sadly) so she goes to see  her neighbour Dove, a woman rumoured to be able to help girls in her 'condition'.

While she's there, red hail starts falling from the sky.

You read that right.

Hail in itself is dangerous and scary enough - but can you imagine something the colour of blood? All that ice that melts and covers everything in that brownish, reddish sludge?

And it doesn't stop there. Oh no.

Shortly after that, things - or more accurately, people - start getting weird in the small town of Galina, middle of nowhere Arizona.

Firstly, people just stop and stare into nothing. Then they start naming things they see in front of them. And as the story and symptoms progress, they then beging "statuing" aka contorting themselves in the weirdest positions possible, before they start "dancing", repeating the same motions over and over again, and so on and so forth.

I mean, this thing creeped me out, let me tell you.

It might be because I have a much too overactive imagination, but just READING about this stuff was enough to make me want to curl up in a corner.

Naturally, as the town itself has always been sort of mixed (Mexican people with American, and two different strains of Christians), the cracks start showing and the divides start coming out as everyone and their mother is now convinced that the Mexicans have brought the plague on Galina.

Nobody listens when it's time to reasonably explain what happened or what you think happened. Of course not. 

Instead, the town literally rips itself apart with violence.

It only ends with multiple deaths and when Anza, Dove and the more reasonable of the local priests (also infected by this plague) figure out that the only ones NOT affected are women past child-bearing age, and Anza, and that it all seems to be coming from a portion of the desert where the first victims were found, and were a group of cacti are growing together really weirdly now.

But flashforward to 2020 and everything's starting again, this time with descendants of Galina survivors.

A professor, Colin, has been researching the Galina incident and trying to prove it as a case of mass hysteria when his boyfriend Alonzo starts exhibiting the same symptoms, and once they team up with a single mother who also seems to be in the same boat, right along with her son, it becomes clear hysteria was not it.

Sure people will generally go with the flow around them, but this is much bigger.

Much, much bigger, as they suddenly start getting messages that this is happening to people all around the world - but all of them are related to Galina survivors.

So the trio heads to Galina, where pretty much everybody else is congregating, too, and they figure out that some of the memories being experienced by those who seem to be "infected" again are actually genetic material passed down from the original Galina inhabitants, through whatever it is that infected them.

And we finally get an answer once Colin & Co visit Anza, living the twilight of her years at Dove's old farm.

She explains that, when things were really starting to gear up and looking like it might turn into an all-out war between factions, she, Dove and the priest rushed to the location in the desert, and because the priest had been infected were able to use a subterranean entrance to an unnaturally made cave, where they found what could probably be described as a sort of queen ant for the red dust that had infected people, coming down via red hail. 

The explanation is this: a race of extraterrestrials chose Earth as their subject of study, but the only way they could do it is if they actually inhabited people - and because they wanted to ensure the continuation of their own race, they chose individuals who could bear children.

This means all men, but only women of child-bearing age, and Anza was excluded because of some defect to her reproductive organs that would have killed her had she tried having a baby.

It's also revealed that the ETs (for lack of better name!) genuinely care about their hosts and don't want them to suffer, and they didn't understand what they'd unleashed in 1960. Anza and Dove bargained with them and asked them to lie dormant for 60 years (with the caveat for several individuals who were just straight-up murderers, like Father Benjamin, leader of the congregation most vocal for getting rid of anyone who doesn't conform, and several others, though only Benjamin was brave enough to stay in Galina and ended up permanently paralyzed; the rest fled).

With 60 years now over, the ETs held to their side of the bargain and woke up again, but now they can actually communicate with people, having learned through observation, and Colin and the rest ask them not to just take control of their human hosts without asking first again, as even in 2020 there's some general intolerance against the weird stuff!

After that though, when it becomes clear this is now a situation of co-existing, Colin welcomes them officially to Earth, and a plan is made that will hopefully enable the two races to happily co-exist together and learn from one another without exploitation.

And on her farm, Anza receives a message from one of the animals descended from those who were initially infected, and smiles up into the vast sky above.

The sci-fi portions of this book are intriguing to read, sometimes creepy, and definitely gripping. But iIt wasn't so much the science fiction aspect of the book that got me though (but I will admit that I was seriously creeped out with the 1960s bit of the book while they were figuring out what was happening, because, HELLO freaky zombie land with random naming things and contorting poses!) but the society it was focused on.

Namely, how absolutely terrible humankind can be to its own people.

It isn't just that it was the 60s either, because it was still present (if in a smaller capacity) in the 2020 portion of the book, where people were mostly just taken as headcases and nutters. But the 60s portion of this is rough, if predictable, because why the hell would we NOT turn against each other when we don't understand something, rather than try to figure it out, am I right?

THAT bit hit home, because essentially, it's a not-so-pretty picture of society as was, and as is. And it gets you thinking. Like one character says in the book proper 'my father was a mean SOB but he stood behind what he said, you don't even have the courage to say the truth, hiding behind niceties and socially-approved expectations'. It's one of the greatest truths you'll ever read anywhere in any book, I think.

The science fiction bit with the dust and ETs and a future of co-existence was fine - plus I've watched Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. from day one and MCU before that, so aliens aren't that freaky for me.

The reality bites though? THAT is what makes this book. And that's what I feel is its strongest point. I might have maybe wanted some more Anza, but that's a minor little nitpick. I highly recommend this book not as a read on 'what might happen if someone from outer space comes to Earth' but rather as a 'how do we as society not make the mistakes of our predecessors' kind of thing. 

xx

*image not mine