Angieville

I can't believe this is the last Weather Warden book currently in print. For awhile there it started to feel like there was a limitless supply at my fingertips. But now I am forced to wait until August to continue the series and find out what happens next for Jo, David, and Lewis. I have decided Lewis needs someone. And I'm really not quite certain it should be Rahel. I think she could really put the hurt on good ole Triple-threat (all powerful, yet surprisingly fragile) Lewis. In any event, my hopes for the upcoming Gale Force include someone to help ground Lewis and some time and space for Jo and David to talk and decompress. I mean, when you're both so busy throwing yourselves in front of oncoming traffic to save each other's lives, you don't really get enough down time together, you know? Thin Air was a refreshing change of pace from the rest of the series. Her memory (and complete identity) stolen by a demon who now looks just like her, Jo wakes up in the mid...

The no holds barred, pedal to the metal pace of these books is going to be the death of me. I didn't even feel like I read this one. More like it was downloaded to my brain in a series of high-speed images and I was left to make sense of it all after the fact. In this installment, the Wardens organization is a complete shambles. Both David and Lewis have inherited unwanted leadership burdens, becoming the unwilling de facto leaders of what's left of the free Djinn and the Wardens respectively. Inextricably tied to both men and both groups, Jo finds herself stretched to the breaking point trying to maintain her loyalty and avoid dying. Again. Firestorm also introduces the concept of the Oracles--supernatural, primal beings who serve as connections between the Djinn and Mother Earth herself. Something dark and nasty begins targeting the Oracles in an attempt to gain entrance to this world and Jo finds herself racing from one Oracle to the next trying to keep the dark and nasty a...

I think this was my favorite Weather Warden book so far. Having washed her hands of the Wardens, Jo is back in Florida working a pay-the-bills job as a "weather girl" with a local TV station. The hilarious part is she doesn't even get to predict the weather. She just stands around in nightmarish costumes (picture huge foam suns with face cut-outs and bulky clouds dripping glitter rain), forced to grit her teeth and smile as the schmaltzy-beyond-belief weather man struts his stuff. Fortunately she has a new friend in the feisty Cherise--the petite and beautiful weather girl who drives a Mustang, gets to wear flattering bikinis, and never gets buckets of water dumped on her. Jo's carefully laid plan of flying under the supernatural radar while trying to figure out how to revive David gets blown to smithereens when her estranged sister shows up on her doorstep in need of a place to stay at the same time as the local Wardens come after her for supposedly tampering with th...

Vegas, baby. This third installment in the Weather Warden series sees our girl Jo burning rubber to stop that little twit Kevin from taking over the world. Now that he's nigh unto invincible (thanks to a heady cocktail of Jonathan and Lewis' powers), he's made his new home a penthouse suite at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, Jo has a very unpleasant history with Sin City, and it comes back to haunt her in a Big Way as she desperately tries to locate Kevin and persuade him to see the light. Chill Factor has a bit of the transitional novel feel to it as a new organization comparable (but sort of diametrically opposed) to the Wardens is introduced, exponentially complicating Joanne's life. Once again, every character except Jo seems to have layer upon layer of hidden motives. In some cases, (such as Marian Bearheart's) these motives made me want to cheer. In others, (such as Lewis') I felt a twist of pain in my gut and, even though he had a quasi-valid ...

Wow. Rachel Caine wasn't kidding with the end of Ill Wind . And the second Weather Warden book, Heat Stroke , takes that unexpected ending and runs with it. Wild. And Jo doesn't get much more of a breather than the reader does as she's plunged headlong into life as a Djinn. Or one half of a Djinn. Or a Djinn in training. Who can tell for sure? Good thing the lovely David is there to help her get a grip on her new reality. Unfortunately, it turns out David broke a few not-so-minor rules when he saved her life and the head Djinn Jonathan isn't happy with him. No, sir. Jonathan's not a bit happy. Before she can catch her breath, he turns Jo over to the rather dubious (but hilarious) Patrick to complete her training. In a week. Or die. And if Jo dies? Yep, you've got it. David'll be gone too. *sob* Of course, it's Jo we're talking about here. So the words "fighting chance" actually mean something. Plus, where Jo is, Lewis can never be very far...

So I finally got around to picking up my first Rachel Caine book. Kimberly 's great interview with Ms. Caine pushed me over the edge and I snagged a copy of Ill Wind , the first in Caine's Weather Warden series featuring Joanne Baldwin. I have to say I really like the cover design and artwork on this series. Simple, classy lines accompany the smooth, witching weather artwork making the overall package quite pleasing. I'm looking forward to how they'll look all lined up nicely on my shelf. Joanne is a weather warden, one of a few hundred people on Earth gifted with the ability to control the elements. Jo's gift is over water and air. She can summon up a storm and divert a disaster, but whenever a warden uses her power, the energy fallout has to go somewhere. And it's a daunting, thankless task managing where to expel it without creating another disaster along the way. Jo's job is made that much more difficult by the fact that she's recently become the u...