The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel Format: eARC
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction
Pages: 160
Published by St. Martin's Press on February 17, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Burned out and looking to put her past behind her, a former addict and recovering influencer interviews her fellow travelers en route to witness the first rain on Mars.
Sakunja Salazar had it all. Money, toys, women, and all the drugs money could buy. A breakout Holo influencer, seemingly overnight she lifted her family out of their tiny Mexico City apartment and into the world of the rich and famous. That all changed when she hopped on a rocket and blasted into the cosmos, never to hawk lavender moisturizer again.
What goes up must come down, and when Sakunja finally crashed back down on Mars an alcoholic, addict, and has-been she thought her life was pretty much over. That is, until a magazine editor discovered her photography and offered her a job. Now, she’s the resident documentarian on a barebones expedition seeking to be the first humans to witness rain on Mars. For the first time in her life, Sakunja is turning the spotlight on someone else–interviewing her fellow travelers about what brought them to join this incredibly foolhardy crew of souls adrift in a world unseen.
My Review:
The blurb isn’t exactly wrong, but the emphasis is on the wrong person. Not that Sakunja Salazar doesn’t tell her own story in this story, but it’s not about her. It’s about all of them, collectively. A somewhat motley crew of characters in search of the ineffable, surprisingly like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – and isn’t that a bit of a surprise?
The story takes place in a future that is close enough that we recognize the past they look back at as our present. More or less. Still, it’s far enough out that Mars has not just been colonized, but has been terraformed just long enough that the success of THAT enterprise is starting to show.
There’s water on Mars. Water that mostly falls in the form of snow, because it’s still DAMN cold, but water is starting to flow. And the oxygen level is rising – not enough to survive long term without an oxygen mask, BUT, enough that there are a few spots where it’s possible for a few hours on occasion – if one is very, very lucky.
Which this bunch hasn’t been, at least not so far. Because the ineffable that they have trekked far away from Mars’ safe and settled underground cities to see, the thing that they are seeking, is rain. Not snow, not merely free flowing water, but actual rain falling from a sky full of clouds. Something that has not happened on Mars since before humans evolved into, well, humans.
But it’s about to. It really is. The expedition hopes to be the first people to see it happen, to literally be in the place where it happens – even if that’s the biggest room in the world.
This could have been the story of the expedition, its planning, its execution, the minutiae of driving away from civilization to a remote location where something wondrous will appear. But that’s not the important bit.
This is a story about the journey – not the trek itself, but the journey that this group of seekers has taken, not just this single trip but the journey of their lives and the journeys that brought them to Mars in the first place. Even when those journeys are not theirs but their parents’ or grandparents’.
Very much like The Canterbury Tales, this is journalist Sakunja Salazar interviewing her fellow travelers, hearing their stories in their own words, painting a portrait of what brought each of them to this singular time and place – and what motivates them to keep going in the face of multiple disasters and setbacks – and not just on this particular trip.
Along the way she gets to tell her own story, to become part of this fascinating and surprising whole. And what comes after.
Escape Rating A-: As is frequently the case, I didn’t exactly know what I was getting into with this one – but I was sure it was short and sometimes that’s enough to start with. I was definitely misled just a bit by the blurb, because that description left me expecting a kind of redemption story, that Sakunja had hit rock bottom and was going to come out better for this experience – or possibly not.
This isn’t that story, and it’s better for it. For one thing, Sakunja has already reinvented herself. Not that she didn’t hit rock bottom, but that sorry state is in her rearview and has been for years. She doesn’t need the money for doing the article, what she’s looking for here is the experience of looking outward instead of inward. She doesn’t want to be the star this time around, because she recognizes that the part of her life where she was was empty.
So the story is about her being just like everyone else on the trip. They each have a story. They’ve each done stupid things and glorious things. They are each in pursuit of something indefinable, something that they find – not in the water, but in their bonding with each other.
This isn’t exactly a light story – although it has light moments. Each of the travelers has survived life’s tragedies, each has experienced something less than a happy ending. But each has also found a kind of peace within themselves – even as they frantically hold each other up as their trek faces setbacks that cut their odds of either seeing what they came to see or surviving the journey.
But their individual stories, and their collective story, do a marvelous job of representing the human experience – even in a place that is far from where our species began. I’m glad I read this one., and I’ll certainly look for this author again.
