House of the Rain King by Will Greatwich is one of the few self-published novels that I’ve actually picked up in its publication year. A glowing review from someone who likes a lot of my favorites and a selection for an online book club was enough for me to take the plunge and see what it was all about.
House of the Rain King features plenty of perspective characters that mostly coalesce around two major plotlines, both precipitated (I swear that was unintentional) by the return of titular god. The central character in the first is an enthusiastic, devout young monk trying to serve in any way he can, only to realize that many of his superiors have their own aims that do not always align with the dictates of their order. At the same time, an indentured servant takes advantage of the chaos to search for riches in tombs connected to local legends of godlike beings from an entirely different pantheon. A mercenary company hired to escort the Rain King finds themselves pulled between both, trying to sort out what to do when their ethics and their contracts come into conflict.
I’ve read a whole lot of self-published SFF, and it varies wildly in the quality of the prose and the editing. The recommendations I received indicated this would be on the high end, so I was not surprised to find an extremely clean and professional copy. There are a few stumbles with the prose—almost entirely made up of jarringly colloquial sentences appearing in the narration—but they’re relatively rare in a story that is generally engaging and easy to read.
As for the story itself, it takes a little while to see how the threads will tie together, but clear from early on is an intriguing, refreshing take on fantasy religion. In so many stories, the people can be divided into the entirely irreligious, those who fake belief for personal gain, and villainous true believers. In House of the Rain King, the god is demonstrably real, so there’s little room for atheism. And yet his followers vary from the unerringly devout to the outright corrupt, and while there’s no debate about whether the god is real, there’s plenty of room for questions of interpretation and the meaning of gaps in the textual records. It’s a system that sets the stage for fascinating conflict that will ultimately drive the entire narrative.
That plot is ultimately a compelling one, though the explicitly religious subplot is a bit better a hook than the dungeon crawl story. The latter does pay off in the climax, and it’s never slow enough to bog down the story, but there are places that might have worked better with some trimming. The novel introduces a relatively large cast of perspective characters, and while none of them hit the kind of depth that you’d see in a more character-driven work, the grouping into two primary companies keeps the shifts from being disorienting, and the interpersonal conflicts only raise the stakes as the story approaches its climax.
Ultimately, House of the Rain King is a quality standalone fantasy driven by a fascinating handling of religion and the various responses to it, featuring plenty of forgotten history to unearth and more than a few conflicts of principle. It offers a quick hook and remains immensely readable for the duration, even in segments without immediately obvious plot ties.
Recommended if you like: interesting fantasy religions, dungeon crawls, uncovering secrets.
Can I use it for Bingo? It’s hard mode for Self-Published, Book in Parts, Down With the System, Gods and Pantheons, and Published in 2025. It also includes Impossible Places, Strangers in a Strange Land, and an LGBTQIA+ Protagonist. Plus it fits the criteria for Hidden Gem and Book Club.
Overall rating: 15 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.