The Riders

Mats Wahl

When Elin lets the arrow go, Bjorn is right in front of her. His mouth is open, he roars wordlessly and wields the cudgel. She looks into his wide-open eyes and knows it’s a dying man’s gaze.

Sixteen-year-old Elin kills Bjorn in self-defense, but fails in rescuing her brother Wagon from being captured. Elin leaves home to negotiate for Wagon’s life, well aware that her actions may sentence them both to death. When Elin arrives at Bjorn’s farm it seems abandoned, and she is unexpectedly caught in a rain storm, colored red with sand from Sahara – blood rain. She seeks protection in her enemies’ house, but soon finds out that she is not alone. Someone is hiding in the basement.

The Riders is the first part in the Blood Rain series, a family tale inspired by Old Norse tradition. With a distinctive laconic language that brings to mind the Icelandic sagas, Mats Wahl weaves a powerful story of the fight for survival of two families, in a not entirely unrealistic future. The ongoing environmental disaster gives rise to climate changes that cause great problems. Blood rain, hurricanes and tornadoes are part of the weather landscape. A large part of Sweden is uninhabitable.

The government rules with an iron hand from the power capital Grovel Lake. Police and military do what they can to “encourage” people to move to the cities, where it’s easier to control them. However, a resistance movement is secretly forming in the country, where families live isolated on farms, as they have done for a long time, managing without the help of police or other authority. Justice takes place outside the realms of official law.

Press voices 

”The atmosphere, family feuds and language in Mats Wahl’s frightening and tremendously skillfully composed book, the first part of the series Bloodrain, is really like an Icelandic saga […] This could be Mats Wahl’s strongest writing yet” Västerbottens-kuriren

”Mats Wahl holds together his rich substance in a both exciting and scary way. The environment and characters are lively and convincingly portrayed.” Karin Engvén, BTJ

“It is impossible to not draw any connections to the successful “Hunger Games” Trilogy. /…/ Because you can surely find similarities between sixteen-year-old Elin and the same year-old Katniss. /…/ It is scary and spellbinding at the same time and I can’t wait to be able to follow the story in the next book, through these unknown Swedish forests once more.”  Kajsa Bergström, GT

The Blood Rain series