The Rains Came Down

A world where nature has claimed the streets of London... where ageless people are perilously addicted to sucking marbles... and where the deaths of three men from another world threatens the order of the universe... In this, his debut novel, Julian Shaw has created a life-affirming and enchanting parallel universe, remarkable for its torrential bursts of action and overwhelming floods of emotion.
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When Gareth Edwards dies in a train crash, he emerges in The Meadow, a realm existing somewhere between life and death. Hunted and on the run, he finds refuge with a travelling circus and journeys with them across the splendour of this strange world, where pubs organise rebellions, cave dwellers archive Earth's disasters - and where a network of monasteries are commissioning expeditions into the Welsh mountains that are too dangerous to speak of.
Gareth joins one of these expeditions, only to find something yet more perilous waiting for him - something with origins that reach beyond this world and into the trauma of his past.