2006 Book #50 - Weather Warden 05: Firestorm by Rachel Caine
And now for my final book of 2006! I thought I wasn't going to make it to 50 books for the year, but I finished this book with two days to spare! I was quite happy about that. It was made easier that I finished out my year of reading with all the books from this series. So it made it easier to fly through these books since after the first one I still had completely fresh on my mind who was who and what was the history of each character. So here's the blurb from the back of the book:

Rogue Weather Warden Joanne Baldwin is racing to New York to warn her former colleagues of the impending apocalypse. An ancient agreement between the Djinn and the Wardens has been broken, and the furious Djinn, slaves to the Wardens for millenia, have broken free of mortal control.

With more than half the Wardens unaccounted for in the wake of the Djinn uprising, Joanne realizes that the natural disasters they've combated for so long were merely symptoms of restless Mother Nature fidgeting in her sleep. Now she's waking up - and she is angry...

This series was leading up to this from the last 3 books. With so much screwing around magically not to mention the constant destruction of everything natural by the unaware humans, Mother Nature was bound to get pissed off at the destruction and chaos being caused by everyone on Earth. So in general everyone on it is a speck of an ignorant and it wouldn't take much thought to just wipe the slate clean. Yes, that means go through enough world turmoil to get rid of those pesky humans and everyone and everything else and just start over. Hopefully with something better that won't screw up Earth. Joanne is now on a mission to maybe catch Mother Nature's attention long enough to plead her case on why exactly humans are worth the bother instead of being obliterated.

Unfortunately, our old good friend the Djinn Ashan who was all for dethroning the now dead Jonathan is really gone nuts. He's all for humans being wiped from the face of the Earth and he'll do whatever he can to keep the apocalypse coming. Turns out there's a couple of Oracles, beings who have the ear of Mother Nature, and these are the ones Joanne needs to try to communicate with or through. Ashan does his best to keep her away from them. With the first one, though, the plan almost backfires because along with all the chaos there's some demons floating around whose ultimate goal are to infect Mother Nature and ultimately kill her. The thinning of the magical dimensions or whatever they are happen around the Oracles and when Joanne meets up with one, the Fire Oracle is nearly killed by one of these enterprising demons who followed her. Joanne just manages to save the day by peeling off the demon and taking it on herself briefly. These things are nasty, life-sucking things, so that was no small sacrifice.

However, that means that now she has to try and find another Oracle and she doesn't have time to drive cross-country this time. FINALLY I get my question answered of why the heck this girl does so much damn driving and doesn't just hop a freakin' plane! Turns out that weather wardens like her never board planes because electrical storms have a tendency of being attracted to them so close and inside the higher atmosphere and do their best to pound on any planes carrying weather wardens. With ones as strong as Joanne, apparently, it's a real nightmare. Thankfully she boards a plane and aside from some scary moments I was saved from yet another bunch of traveling in a car of which I'd be bombarded with all of its specs and how sexy it is. *rme* Along the way she does get distracted with trying to help calm down some bad situations what with everything going to hell, such as gigantic forest fires raging out of control and attracting more demons loving the raw power going up.

Along the way she also has a chance to get to learn more about her fully formed adult sized daughter who knows everything her "father" David knows. Here comes the unbelieveable part again. Suddenly since there's this walking talking Djinn that was formed from power of Joanne and David, Joanne suddenly has this maternal instinct to protect her only-half Djinn daughter. I'm sorry, but I don't believe that this woman would be able to have a maternal instinct overnight (or less) especially under such unusual circumstance where you're not protecting a cute little infant, but some full-grown half-Djinn. Anyway, between her daughter, Imara, and David who pops up a couple of times just in the nick of time, Joanne keeps getting her bacon saved and she manages to make it all the way to the Oracle she needs to see in Arizona, the Earth Oracle. Makes sense, she'd be the one closest to Mother Nature. Only that damn pesky Ashan keeps showing up. Again, if David had really wanted to see Joanne make it to the Earth Oracle without problems he should've just taken out Ashan. But I guess that wouldn't make for a good story. :)

So there's Joanne, trying to talk to the Earth Oracle and she's too busy contemplating...the cosmos? Something that is way not in the same room as them. Nothing Joanne's saying about how wonderful humans really are seem to be making any difference or an impression. Meanwhile Ashan is STILL trying to stop Joanne only now in the presence of the Oracle he's actually somehow being physically stopped from doing something to her. Joanne finally figures out that she's there to act as a conduit, a network where all the voices of humanity pour out all their yelling and screaming and fear and everything else while Mother Nature is busily trying to wind down their clock. Finally Mother Nature listened to all from the lowest human to the strongest one with all four powers of the Wardens...and she stopped the apocalypse.

Which for some reason causes Ashan to finally snap and he starts doing something magical to Joanne. It's worded in a way that makes it look like maybe the Oracle grants something special to Joanne that I think if you don't read carefully you might miss. Ashan probably has an idea because he starts to say that he won't bow to Joanne when he attacks her. He's in the process of yanking something out of her head magically when the Earth Oracle comes back out of her absent contemplation and rips him a new one. Literally. She screams at him while attacking him like some sort of banshee and then goes right back to peacefully contemplating. Too bad it looks like it was too late for whatever Ashan was doing to Joanne. Because Joanne's fallen on the floor thinking that he didn't seem like a Djinn anymore, but a human instead and then Joanne loses all her memory and...poof disappears.

That was definitely a wtf?! That's how it ends?! Where'd she go and what did he do to her that at the end she can't remember who the mystery man is on the floor or anything else for that matter?! Definitely a great cliffhanger! The whole culmination of bringing Mother Nature into all this was great and the plot of consequences coming to us stupid humans screwing up the world too. Now I kind of dread what kind of goddess Joanne's been made. I'm sure that's what it is! But we'll see whenever book six comes out!