A review by nathanaeljs
The Rain Is a Lie by Gennifer Albin

4.0

I'm normally not a fan of short stories that are written to get people to read a novel. They tend to read like the first chapter of a novel, incomplete and lacking as a coherent narrative. "The Rain Is a Lie" does not have that problem. It's a very short, self-contained story about a boy who remembers a rainstorm that apparently never happened, set in some sort of high tech world that adheres to bizarrely rigid gender roles. Albin very elegantly builds the narrative's ominous mood with one bit of disturbing worldbuilding after another, ending on a note that invokes a very Matrix-like sense.