‘The Watcher in the Rain’ – Alec Worley (Black Library)

Runtime: One Hour, Fourteen Minutes.

I’m normally very much a book or comic book kind of person; nothing against audio-books, they just don’t pop up on my radar (these days) as a method of consuming books. Especially with kids like mine who are annoyingly persistent until they get what they need… They are books though, lets be clear on that 😉 But anyway… I don’t normally listen to audio-books but Audible decided it was time to chuck me a couple of free credits and I thought it would be rude to say no…

I grabbed a copy of ‘Realmslayer’ right away, just because Brian Blessed was born to play the part of Gotrek, and I’d been hearing good things about ‘The Watcher in the Rain’ so grabbed that too.

I had a listen to ‘Watcher’ last night, well… More like a couple of listens as the day kind of caught up with me and I had a little nap… 😊 After that false start though, I went back and listened to it the whole way through and… Damn, that was creepy.

In the far reaches of Imperial space, a ferocious warp storm approaches an Administratum world, cutting off the entire planet from the rest of the Imperium. As their towering grey spires are punished by endless rain, countless administrators, tithe-masters, and book-keepers are forced to evacuate. Among them is Greta, a lowly data-drone with a terrible secret, wanted for questioning by the sadistic Imperial interrogator Stefan Crucius. As disaster strikes and the pair are left stranded in the depths of the drowning city, captor and captive must cooperate to stand any chance of escaping. But a mysterious presence stalks them through the abandoned, flooded towers, a dread entity each must confront but which neither dare acknowledge, a Watcher in the Rain.

‘The Watcher in the Rain’ was a little difficult to get the hang of to start with; it’s not a regular audio-book with someone narrating, things happen right in the moment and our players have to deal with these. It was a little weird to get my head around but once I was there, I really enjoyed the approach for the demands that it made on the listener. You can’t take your attention of ‘The Watcher’ for a moment otherwise you’re lost and that’s great because once things start to get really creepy, you’re right there in the middle of it and that’s the best place to be. Because ‘The Watcher’ is as creepy as hell, from the encroaching threat of the warp storm to the creeping menace that lurks in the corner of Stefan and Greta’s eyes and demands their full attention. What is it? That’s almost besides the point here as not only is the Watcher genuinely creepy (it appears in the damn raindrops!) but it also serves to bring out the real horror of the story, how mankind’s own Imperium fights against the alien threat while turning its own citizens into something less than human. It may be necessary for the survival of humanity but if the people of the Imperium lose their humanity in the process…? What’s truly horrifying about Stefan and Greta’s stories is that they’re not the most horrifying stories that you’ll even hear if your reading brings you to this setting. Worley does very well to let us know this.

Add some spot-on voice work and a background soundtrack that thunders (sometimes literally, it is raining after all) with menace and it was very clear why I’d heard nothing but good things about ‘The Watcher in the Rain’. Definitely worth a listen if you get the chance.