A dark, harrowing tale of grief and greed that contaminates the literary Gothic with eco-horror to haunt the modern-day queer experience.
More than a year has passed since the fire. The destruction of a home is bad enough, but the remaining members of Dylan’s family perished in the fire, so grief has followed Dylan in relentless pursuit.
Never one to pass up an opportunity, Max, Dylan’s first love, seized what he could from a grief-stricken Dylan. He would have taken everything, but the fire gave Dylan an inexplicable strength to escape, so they left Rotherwell in search of a new life across the Atlantic. But Max doesn’t let his possessions slip through his fingers so easily. He is gaining on Dylan, and he intends to drag them back to Rotherwell to resolve their unfinished business.
But Dylan can never go back. Before they left Rotherwell, Dylan saw something scuttling about the charred bricks and broken window frames of their family home. Dylan recognized the creature as much as they recognized the burning sensation deep beneath their skin. The creature revealed to Dylan that greed was causing the burning sensation, and it was this same greed that had driven Dylan’s father to commit so much violence. Terrified that Dylan’s father might inflict more violence from beyond the grave, Dylan vowed never to return to Rotherwell.
Lost in the dismal grey of London, Dylan hopes that the incessant rain will cool the burning beneath their skin, and far from Rotherwell, they will be safe from any other dangers. But an international border cannot contain horrors, just as one generation cannot contain trauma, genetic quirks, and contaminants. The true horror awaits Dylan and every person they know because the fire was just the beginning.
Twisted, powerful, and darkly liberating, Rainbow Warrior is a challenging work of queer horror that considers supernatural and real-world horrors that result from our greed and our manipulation of each other and the natural world.