The Ninth Rain

The Winnowing Flame Trilogy, Book 1

By: Jen Williams

Narrated by: Jot Davies

The first in a blistering new trilogy from Jen Williams, acclaimed author of British Fantasy Award-nominated Copper Cat trilogy. Epic fantasy for fans of Robin Hobb and Jay Kristoff's Nevernight.

Jen Williams, acclaimed author of The Copper Cat trilogy, featuring The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide, returns with the first in a blistering new trilogy.

The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces - talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.

When eccentric explorer Lady Vincenza 'Vintage' de Grazon offers him employment, he sees an easy way out. Even when they are joined by a fugitive witch with a tendency to set things on fire, the prospect of facing down monsters and retrieving ancient artefacts is preferable to the abomination he left behind. But not everyone is willing to let the Eboran empire collapse, and the adventurers are quickly drawn into a tangled conspiracy of magic and war. For the Jure'lia are coming, and the Ninth Rain must fall....

©2017 Jennifer Williams (P)2017 Headline Digital

Critic reviews

"An original new voice in heroic fantasy." (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

"Fantasy adventure at its very best." ( Starburst)

"Williams excels at eldritch world-building." ( Guardian)

Takes some time to get going

Good story if you don’t mind the build up. Took 1/3 of the book before I got to the point of not being able to stop listening. Glad I stuck with it. I like it. Looking forward to the next.

Creative interesting characters action packed

5Star story and performance
Creative story with relatable characters that left me happy to read book 2 in the trilogy. Not a dull moment. How will the players interact and what powers are needed to regain control of their shared world. I’m about to find out. Highly recommend

It sleeps, it waits

“Memories like that, girl, they get passed down through the bone.”
An engaging slow burn of a dystopian fantasy. Like many reviewers, I found the first two hours to be confusing and a bit pointless, other than to show, rather than tell, how the world had fallen. You could start two hours in and not miss much. From there, when the various POVs start to meet and overlap, there’s a deliciously creepy story headlined mostly by women.

“We do not make agreements with food.”
This has themes seen in other fantasies, like the eerily sentient bug menace in Starship Troopers or the spirits of Final Fantasy. It even has a kind of vampire in the Ebolans, who drink blood and have greater strength and longevity compared to humans. With a single reference to engines and talk of crystals and flying behemoths, this is vaguely steampunk. The past pairings of the supernatural Ebolans with great magical beasts also gives this a bit of an Airbender anime vibe. But, like the fascinating bug-things, the familiar themes from other works mutates into things utterly unique here.

This is YA fantasy (not grimdark, nor romance), with only fade to black sex, some LGBTQ characters as the trilogy progresses, and occasional F bombs. This ends on a cliffhanger to a MacGuffin middle book, but ends strong with a book three packing emotional punch. On the whole, a solid trilogy.

Ahead of it’s time

Great book, great world building. It was hard to read at different spots in the book and you really have to pay attention to the little details which sometimes made it stressful to keep up. I will be reading book two lol and what a cliff hanger she left us on ☺️

Couldn’t put it down!

This novel is so full of mystery and adventure, I couldn’t put it down. It’s so unique, I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of it before. If you love fantasy and sci-fi stories with great characters, you’ll love this! I already purchased the 2nd book in the series.

Such a creative story

I’ve never read anything like this. It’s a very complex world that mixes several unique ideas.
The characters are gripping and I found myself very invested in them.

WHOA everyone just get this

This is a master storyteller. I never read anything by her before but I went out and bought the whole trilogy after listening to this. Why is everyone sleeping on this one? Dark fantasy sci-fi mashup between a fallen LOTR type world and an inexorable interplanetary enemy a la Enders Game. You will not regret reading!

Let down

I was really looking forward to this series after reading reviews. I bought all 3 books, but after finishing The Ninth Rain, I’m not invested in continuing.

The concept was there, I was intrigued. However I found it lacking all around. The world building, character development, and epic battles just weren’t there (especially in comparison to The King Killer Chronicle & The Bloodsworn Saga, this book paled in comparison).

Also, I didn’t love the narration. Particularly, the whisper “yelling” was cringeworthy.

What A Fantastic World!

Typically, I'm in it for the characters...and it's a good thing that this book has some excellent characters. But what this book really has that's special is the world building!

I love the idea of starting after a world has started to die. The world (or parts of it) are decaying and the people who live in it still have to live. It's almost a post-apocalyptic fantasy in that way. The characters are rich and compelling. The magic system is interesting. I am definitely going on in the series.

Pretty standard fantasy in a cool world

I don't feel like I wasted my time listening to this because it had some really cool ideas and the writing was decent. The characters were okay, but nothing really stuck out as great (Bern was the best but he was only a minor character). There was some lazy writing, I think "like a sack of potatoes" was used multiple times, maybe she put it in there to keep moving and planned on going back to change it later but never got to it?

I think the worst part was there didn't seem to be a purpose to the wanderings of the characters for a long time, maybe the first half of the book.