Every Dark Cloud by Marisca Pichette
Every Dark Cloud
by Marisca Pichette
Ghost Orchid Press
March 25, 2025
Every Dark Cloud by Marisca Pichette, forthcoming from Ghost Orchid Press, is cli-fi novella that “combines a dystopian setting and class-conscious narrative with a glimmer of hope for our shared humanity.”
I had the privilege of getting to review this novella early, and its sensory worldbuilding and gentle tone vibrating with tension were such an immersive reading experience!
Every Dark Cloud follows Mallory, an architect, in a society shrouded in darkness decades after a climate disaster puts Earth in a sun-poisoned apocalypse. Mallory meets crash-landed Rein, whose teeth glow with radiation and body crisped to deformity from living above the government-created cloudcover. Rein reveals to Mallory the sinister labor divide hidden by government and corporate lies, and the rebellion that is on the clock to destroy both sides of the clouds. Curious and stricken about the world they thought they knew, Mallory helps Rein survive until they’re both caught and Mallory is detained, given a new identity, and tasked to help fix the sky. They succeed and are reunited with Rein, ending the book on a poignant feeling of optimism and relief.
Pichette does marvelous work with the senses of smell and touch throughout the book. While there are still plenty of visual cues, she meets the world she’s created where it is and mostly describes places, objects, and people through scents, textures, and temperatures. As a reader who especially loves copious description and detailed settings, this experience thoroughly embodies spaces Mallory traverses and enriches my imagination.
Mallory’s characterization also feels very real and whole. They’re on the outskirts of a problem suddenly thrust to the forefront from out of their scope of control, now discovering and grappling with new truths and consequences. The society they inhabit is also easy to believe from the point-of-view of their minor status within it. It very much mirrors our real life present and past very well, with representation of big business’s harm on the natural world and human health, as well as the roles of people as cogs to make society function at scaling levels of exploitation. The mixtures of Mallory’s unease, acceptance, determination, and fixation in the face of what they’ve stumbled upon makes sense for the character’s small, unsatisfied world view up to this point. It’s an overwhelmingly short amount of time to learn and grow, and they take this responsibility to heart with bravery, compassion, and an appropriate amount of fear.
The novella form here is well-utilized, spending half of the pages in only hours of in-story-time and half spanning a year in segments. This feels accurate to Mallory’s experiences — the intensity of their day with Rein, and the slowly treacherous monotony of their detainment, court tasks, work, and trauma recovery. It also makes sense for exploring the limited locations of this world, while being able to hone in on the little but extremely tangible things within it — the molding of clay, the color of mushrooms, the ooze of a blister, the smell of water. As a tool for showing readers the scope of a world, the format of Every Dark Cloud is a triumph of perspective.
There was only one moment when I was thrown out of Pichette’s otherwise clean verisimilitude, and that was about a third of the way through the story when Mallory decides that they believe Rein is indeed from the dangerous world above the clouds. Mallory has discovered the numbered identification “25683-80-774” stitched into Rein’s burnt clothing, and they decipher the number to mean “Rein is number 774. The seven hundred and seventy-fourth individual, eighty years since the Clouding. […] They’re from the other side of the clouds.” However, this does not convey the same realization to the reader, especially this early in the narrative. I found my self rereading the section repeatedly to try to find what I was missing to reach Mallory’s conclusion.
Overall, Every Dark Cloud is a compelling book. It was breezy to read without coming across rushed or incomplete, and deep in the face of brevity. The worldbuilding is tight, interesting, and accessible. Pichette writes a belief in humanity that’s carefully constructed, neither excusing its faults nor shutting down an opportunity for improvement. This book leaves the reader feeling content and maybe a bit tender.
Every Dark Cloud releases one week from today! Learn more about the collection and pre-order your copy HERE.
Thank you to Ghost Orchid Press for the complimentary ARC of this title! I appreciate the early opportunity to read Marisca’s work and look forward to seeing the final release out in the world. :)
— Kylie