Weather Warden 03: Chill Factor

by Rachel Caine | Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ISBN: 0451460103 Global Overview for this book
Registered by synergy of San Antonio, Texas USA on 1/7/2007
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by synergy from San Antonio, Texas USA on Sunday, January 7, 2007
2006 Book #48 - Weather Warden 03: Chill Stroke by Rachel Caine

OK, seriously, what is it with the book titles to this series? Sure, the main character can effect the weather and all the titles are weather related. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the title should somehow link to something in the plot or even a single event or line or something. Anyway, that's one of my nitpicks about this series. And now for the blurb from the back of the book:
In Rachel Caine's Ill Wind and Heat Stroke, Weather Warden extraordinaire Joanne Baldwin, who protects the human race from monster storms, was killed, reborn as a Djinn, and then restored to her original form. She's been through a lot - and stuck her neck out many times - to save innocent lives. Now she's rolling the dice to stop an infinitely powerful, deeply disturbed kid from destroying the world...

A teenager named Kevin has holed up in style at a Vegas hotel with the most powerful Djinn in the world, planning who knows what kind of mischief. The Wardens' senior leadership is dead, Djinn are disappearing, and a secret society wants to help Joanne destroy Kevin, even if doing so kills her (again). But everybody in Vegas as a game going, and Joanne has to learn the rules fast because the stakes have never been higher - and all hell is about to break loose....

Just like in the first book, the story mainly starts out with a lot of driving around and of course plenty of asides on how wonderful this character's car is. *rme* At any rate, there's a lot of driving around because Joanne is trying to drive to Vegas and this kid Kevin Prentiss and his Djinn, Jonathan, are keeping a buffer zone of sorts to keep her out. So mainly she's just circling and constantly being thwarted by weather or earthquakes or whatnot. You know, if I didn't want someone to bother me and I had a powerful Djinn I wouldn't screw around, I'd just kill them. Poof! Trust me, this kid isn't an example of moral rectitude. He'd have someone killed without thinking about it twice. Actually, he already had considering what happened at the end of book two when he ended up in possession of Jonathan.

So meanwhile Joanne is doing all this driving around with another Djinn, David. I'd forgotten to mention David in my previous reviews although I didn't want to get too far into it because I'd get ranty. She met David in book one while he was hitchhiking looking like a normal human and she was on her roadtrip as a fugitive. They end up in the sack together, but then soon after Joanne finds out he's a Djinn. Before that she didn't know that Djinns existed outside of the control of humans, "free range Djinn" if you will. As a matter of fact, it's David's fault that she doesn't just die at the end of book one, but becomes a Djinn for book two. This breaking of the rules, disbalancing of the Force, or whatever you want to call it, is what causes things going to hell in book two.

Well, my main problem with Joanne and David is that it doesn't feel like Joanne would be the type to have the feelings she does for him nor act the way she does. As I've mentioned several times before, she's the cocky and superficial type and yet when it comes to portray their relationship you'd think it was a love of the century. It just doesn't jibe with me. So if you ask why she would go around saving mankind and not wanting the bad guys to win, I don't think there's conflict there because there's plenty of people who do these types of things, not so much for rescueing people or doing the right thing, but because they get an adrenaline rush out of it and/or they love the praise and respect for their heroics. I think that would go well with the type of personality I feel Joanne has.

So when there's all these different people all with their own agendas of how to get things done in Vegas, including a mysterious Egyptian-themed shadow group named the Ma'at introduced in this book, Joanne is "forced" to capture David into a bottle and have him under her command. A big deal is made out of how she doesn't want to do it because she doesn't want to twist their love with this master-Djinn relationship, but with Jonathan getting passed around by unsavory characters who want to master that much Djinn power she doesn't have a choice. Once again Joanne to the rescue.

Unfortunately by fluke a Djinn who'd gotten her magic eaten and turned into this shade being named an ifrit sucks the life out of David and turns HIM into an ifrit. So now someone else is in control of Jonathan, David is an ifrit, and Joanne gets shot in the confusion. The good news is that Jonathan doesn't want to be anyone's slave since he never had been one before this episode. Oh and this is also where there's some closing explanation to the plot from book one. She killed a Warden who'd gone bad and a guy who's stealing Djinn bottles was one of the ones who was working for the bad Warden. At the time she thought what was being smuggled was drugs or something like that, but it was Djinn bottles that were being smuggled and now this guy who's figured out what he was smuggling has Jonathan. In the end of course the guy, Thomas Orenthal (Orry) Quinn, dies, Jonathan is freed, but Joanne is still catching shit from her Warden Association bosses for how she went about saving the world. So she quits. And that sets up the plot for the next book.

Overall better than the second book with so many groups thrown in the mix who could mess with Joanne, so it made it more difficult for her and less chances for her cocky spouting off. It helped that she was thrown for a loop again going back to being human.

8/10

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