By: Ros Haden
I was very excited when I got an email from Ghanain writer, Cheryl Ntumy, towards the end of last year. She wanted to know if I would be interested in reading her, as yet unpublished, teen novel Rainmaker. Cheryl has published many romance and YA novels and is an experienced writer. She is now living in Botswana and had heard about FunDza through one of our regular, and much loved contributors, Lauri Kubuitsile.
I really enjoyed Rainmaker and hoped our readers would love it as much as I did. I was particularly interested because we want to expand our adventure/fantasy content in our FunDza library and this was a perfect start.
Rainmaker is an adventure story set in a fantasy kingdom where a young boy, Kitso, has two weeks left before he’s crowned heir to the kingdom. As the next Rainmaker in a long line, he’s expected to bring the rain at the crowning ceremony. But Kitso has a terrible secret from the kingdom. He is the first Rainmaker who can’t make rain and when his subjects find out they will turn the army on him.
As this intro suggests it is an exciting race against time. We published Rainmaker as a special bonus read before Christmas and it went down a treat with our readers.
Here are some of their comments which were so lovely:
“This site offers most of us the opportunity to learn a lot. Keep it please.” – Wilfred
“What a beautiful story, got me hooked from the word go. Loved it.” – Zuziwe
“The best novel in history.” – Anonymous
“Wow Wow the best story I have ever read man” – Bucs Diva
And here’s my favourite quote:
“The best story ever, couldn’t put my phone down and I had to stay near the charger the whole time – Big Ups to the author.” – Siziphiwe