Gaunt Rainbow is set in a bleak dystopia twenty years after a pivotal event in the war between the Chosen caste and heathens; the destruction of the walled city called Capital. Pamela, a young woman nicknamed “Rainbow,” is cursed and drains life from the living so that she remains healthly. The uncontrollable fact fills her with remorse.After years of knowingly tormenting others, Pamela follows rumors. She goes into the Shur desert to find the errant messiah and hopes he'll remove her murderous curse. The hunt ends the day she leaves the encampment. A sniper kills her. Eight years pass before Pamela is resurrected in the isolation of the desert. Her money and supplies are missing, despite the dead bodies and abandoned vehicles that surround Pamela when she awoke. She goes to the city, Gomorrah, and meets her old friends, Tee and Ruth. She learns about a new city, called New Babel. The heathens are building the city from the spoils of the war with the Chosen. The city lays deep in the southern part of desert and is rumored the messiah disappeared in the south. She hopes she see the messiah, David, all grown up.