Since I got back from my holiday, I’ve really struggled to concentrate on reading (is that a symptom of jetlag?) so I returned to the Weather Warden series for a bit of light entertainment. Those of you not familiar with Rachel Caine’s other urban fantasy series, you can read my introduction here. The books do have an ongoing plot throughout the series so I don’t think they stand alone and the following may contain spoilers for the first 3 books.
Windfall is the fourth book in the series and picks up from the end of Chill Factor. Jo has quit the weather wardens and is now working as a lowly weather girl. She doesn’t even get to wear a bikini but instead is forced into hideous foam suns and clouds for her strangely accurate yet deeply unlikable boss. If that wasn’t bad enough, her sister turns up on her doorstep husbandless, homeless and above all without her extensive wardrobe. She can’t turn her away despite the fact that she has to do something about David, who at the end of the previous book, wasn’t in great shape at all.
Amongst all that, there are two pretty good characters introduced; a cop with questions who just won’t leave Jo alone and Eamon, her sister’s rebound target. I feel these books sometimes take a little too long to get going and if you’re not into weather then I can imagine they can seem a little slow but I found I couldn’t put it down once it got going.
So I got so wrapped up I went onto the next book, Firestorm. By now you’ve probably lost all hope for Jo and David and are looking in the direction of Lewis again. Unfortunately, they’re in the middle of a djinn uprising and things aren’t looking good for the wardens, or even the human race. Mother Earth is waking up and she’s not too happy with what humans have done in her absence. Great pacy stuff and I think her characters have enough dimensions to not be too predictable.
Not that I think these books are amazing literature but they were just what the doctor ordered so I’m giving them a big fat 4 stars each.
