In a post apocalyptic future, Mabel lives with her sister Tess, in a small village where it rains constantly. As a result, the land around is flooded and the people live on islands making do the best they can. Scavenging for items from the waters she does her best to survive after her mother and several others left to find better land to the West which would support them all and allow them to survive. While scavenging and selling the goods she has found, she finds that a new group of scavengers have occupied the island where the local coal mine is and seem to holding it as their own. When her friend is captured by them, Mabel tries to rescue her. But in doing so finds out that they will trade the coal for supplies effectively holding the other villages at ransom. Mabel rushes back to the village with the news as they try to decide their next steps.

This is a dystopian future where the rains have never stopped and flooded large parts of the world. The world building is excellent laying out what is happening around and how the villages interact and live their day to day lives. I enjoyed the descriptions of how the people interact and how it all works. The characters are ok, and you get an idea of the situations they face, and Mabel makes a great character to follow.

The plot is a little slow, plenty of setting things up, but it doesn’t really start until the very end of the story, which may set up the next book in the series, but also means that little is actually done in this book.

The main problem I have with the story is that the main character for the first part is Mabel and the plot is being laid out, but when it finally kicks off, Mabel is not part of it. It makes me wonder why Mabel is the main character when it seems that others are becoming the main focus of the story. While this is the first in a series, it seems an odd way to end the this particular part.

The formatting and editing of the story is fine and it makes for a good quick read, but little more than that. Overall, if you are looking for a quick read to get started in the series and get a feel for the authors work, then this is ideal.