Customer Reviews

Ill Wind (Weather Warden, Book 1)

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(48)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

If you are looking for an entertaining book to help you pass a dragging afternoon, this one might be it. Don't expect deep meanings or complicated character introspection, just lots of action-packed fun, lots of magic, a decent mystery and a very likable lead character -- which is better than I could say about many urban fantasy stories out there. Joanne is a Weather Warden with a big problem: she is running a race against time to rid herself of a Demon Mark inflicted on her by her former, corrupted boss. The mark is like a parasite: if she doesn't get rid of it fast, it will pervert her power and turn it into something impossible to control. If the other wardens get to her first, she will lose all her power, if not her life. The alternative is to pass the mark on to somebody else, preferably a djinn, and condemn him or her to a life of eternal torment. She thinks she knows her choices, but in fact she has no idea what her choices really are. As the story unfolds, friends and enemies become no longer easily distinguishable, even more so when willing friends are forced to turn into unwilling enemies. The one person that might have the key to it is nowhere to be found and doesn't seem that friendly after all.

If the plot structure sounds well-known to you, is because you've already encountered it (Jim Butcher's "Dresden files" series springs to mind, to give but an example). Hopefully, that won't prevent you from checking out the book: it makes good on its promises, with a nice twist at the end. If Harry Dresden charmed the readers with his dry wit and inborn talent of making a mess of just about everything, Joanne will appeal to the readers (some readers, anyway) with her disarming honesty about her likes and dislikes. Frankly, I found it quite refreshing to come across a female character that fantasizes freely about men, enjoys fast cars and sexy cloths, and is not ashamed to admit it. The djinns are a nice and less explored alternative to vampires, werewolves and fey creatures (all of which seem to me quite over-used nowadays). Generally, the characters of the story didn't have too much "texture" and appeared a bit too simplistic for my taste - but hey, there's plenty room for future development. On the whole, the action is very nicely paced, with just the right amount of suspense and magical deeds. In short, a promising beginning and a definite page-turner.

I'm always looking for something new in the whole paranormal/supernatural genre and so I picked up Ill Wind after I'd seen people talking about Rachel Caine online. I must admit to an initial hesitance, I read the back and was slightly interested.

I'm so glad that I forged ahead and picked it up to read because it's so much better than the back cover makes it out to be.

Weather wardens, Earth Wardens, Fire Wardens - I wasn't overly interested by the cover and yet, Caine introduces us to these wardens who protect the rest of us from the weather and the earth and other natural disasters with a really unique and interesting spin. That they are aided bu djinn only adds something else.

Joanne Baldwin is a weather warden who is on the run from a murder wrap, oh and she's bearing a demon mark too. Knowing that the only way to get rid of the demon that's been forced into her body is to force it on another human, which is against her moral code, or a djinn, who are rare but she knows who might have a spare or two. Jo drives all over the eastern seaboard and into the south with djinn, friends, foes and killer storms all popping in and out.

The results, rather than seeming scattered or disconnected, actually create a tight story and a macro universe from which many other stories can come (and I hear she's working on two more books now).

The story has a few good twists that you don't see coming and lots of action and a bit of sexual tension. All in all, a great recipe and a very readable book.

I purchased this book based on the "Amazon" recommendation page. This was not a bad book, but it was not what I had expected either. I like science fiction/fantasy books and I thought this was going to be a little bit of sci-fi and mystery. Unfortunately, this ended up being more of a "romance" novel with a bit of sci-fi thrown in, if you can call it that. I liked the idea of weather wardens (people having the power to control the weather); I also liked the lead character Joanne. But, too much of this book focused on her sexuality and her attraction to the opposite sex. While I don't dislike this idea completely, it seemed out of place as the story progressed. It felt like Joanne was more concerned with her appearance and her love life than the fact that she was running for her life.
All in all it was not a horrible book and if you want a nice fluff piece with somewhat interesting characters this is an ok book. If you are looking for something with a little more depth and not in the mood for a "romance" type book, this is not the story for you.

There were some things I liked about Ill Wind a lot, and others I liked less well. I think that the elemental magic is great, and Caine writes about weather in the most passionate, palpable way.

I liked the way that Caine added flashbacks to the characters' college years and childhood. I liked that the heroine was smart, powerful, and sexy. No apologies for it.

But I didn't think that the characters were fully fleshed out - and I was frustrated by the ending - a novel involving the paranormal, or fantasy, can only survive if the author resists the desire to create impossible situations and then cart out a deus ex machina.

Same thing with the Demon Mark. The heroine is so busy running around that she never stops to logically think through what is happening to her, or ask intelligent questions. And it seems like Caine sort of pushes events to this pace where it's almost impossible to keep track of what's going on.

I read a short story by Rachel Caine that is a prequel to the Morganville Vampire series and liked it a lot so I tried this series. I liked the first book well enough, so I went and bought all the rest. What a waste. Each story seemed like more of the same, over and over, with the heroine making absolutely idiotic choices and never really DOING anything about the things that keep happening to her. Save your time and money and don't get started on this series.

I'm a writer, and I'm jaded; I've read 2-3 books a day for 26 years. Few authors can catch and keep my attention. Rachel Caine put her hands around my throat and she squeezed. This went way beyond can't-put-the-book-down, she induced a state of reader coma so deep that I was sure if I stopped reading the story would go on without me and I'd never know if the characters survived. I finished it, then I re-read it. Do yourself a favor, ok? Buy it.
HJ

Fantastic - really! A great book, a great read, a real page-turner - one of those books where I rush to the end of a page to see what will happen on the next page. The premise is made believable (weather is caused by evil somethings, djinni can be sources of power to magicians - including weather wardens), a secret coven (?) of weather wardens, housed at the UN Building, really save the world - almost daily.

This author makes her world and premises believable, her characters human (even the djinni), and the dilemmas truly frightening. As twists in the plot reveal new information and new factors they fit in nicely - no deus ex machina for this author. Lots of adventure, lots of risk, many moments of humor along the way, and a happy and tricky ending which I won't reveal.

I will be watching eagerly for the next book in this series and will buy it on the spot.

This book sat on my shelf for quite awhile before I read it. I didn't
expect it to be very interesting. I mean it's about the weather.
But I'm happy to have been wrong. This book is a good urban fantasy
with all the elements that make that genre so appealing. There is a
bit more romance in this book than I really cared for. I would have
preferred some romantic tension that built over the course of the
series, but I still liked this book a lot.

Sexual Content:
Some coarse talk, and two sex scenes that while not overly graphic
are still somewhat detailed.

I have become quite addicted to books that have stories of various types of paranormal characters living secretly or openly in our modern world, and interacting in and affecting the lives of us mere mortals. It seems to have become a fantasy subgenre, first with the gentler tales of authors like Charles DeLint and Emma Bull, more steeped in traditional fantasy, but taking a darker, more kick-butt action orientation with the huge success of Laurel K. Hamilton's series of Anita Blake and Merrie Gentry books.

Ill Wind, the first book in the WEather Warden series by Rachel Caine, definitely falls into this second category. The book's protagonist, Joanne Baldwin, works for a secret agency that employs agents' supernatural abilities to control and mitigate the worst of Mother Nature's depredations against humans, including weather, forest fires and earthquakes. Joanne's speciality is weather control and she is one of the strongest and most powerful Wardens in the agency. This ultimately makes her a target for someone within the agency who has plotted against her, and as the book opens, Joanne is on the run not just for her life but for control of her very soul, trying to find the one person she believes can help her. She is pursued not only by Agency operatives who believe that she killed her own boss, but the forces of nature itself, which are always oddly attracted to Wardens but seem to be targeting Joanne in particular.

The book was suspenseful and I had a hard time putting it down. There were some nice twists in the plot, including a resolution that I absolutely didn't see coming, but which nicely sets up further books in the series. While it is another variation on similar themes worked by Hamilton, Jim Butcher, Kim Harrison and others, it's a good variation and worthwhile on its own. And if you are like me and can't get enough of these kinds of books, this is a series well worth checking out!

The cover art for this novel was interesting enough for me to pick it up and give it a try, in spite of my boyfriend's explicit warnings that I would probably find this book to be one big, plotless headache. As it turns out, he was correct; this book was bad enough for me to take the active initiative to write up a review, when reminded that I had the chance to do so.

This is your warning, just as I was given a warning: turn back now. This book will make your brain cry. Also, a puppy dies every time someone buys a new copy. You don't want to be a puppy-killer, do you?

Let's assume you don't. But just to be as honest with you as possible, here are the reasons why you should not pick up this book if you have any interest in a novel which makes sense:

-The main character, Joanne, cannot look at a male protagonist without immediately informing the reader how sexually attracted she is to him, and then smugly telling the reader that he probably wants to have sex with her whether or not she's actually interested in him. I am not a sexually repressed person. I fully support living the life you're comfortable with. I just like to have a little bit more variety in my character-descriptions than "This man was also hot, just like the last one. I had known him for four years, and I knew he wanted to get into my pants. I had considered getting into his pants, but had eventually decided against it. But now I was reconsidering it, because I was apparently not at all worried about the horrible life-threatening stuff chasing me around the country." Oh, but don't worry: *every single man* in this book is hot in some way. This author does not ruin her books with silly things like ugly male characters, realistic characterization, or *plot.*

-The romance. Oh god. As much as I complain about the excess of sexy-descriptions in this book, I would have been a million times better with the main character ending up with any one of the male characters with even a slight bit of personality, rather than with the cardboard cut-out oh-so-perfect boyfriend she ends up with instead. The first thing Joanne notices about every man she meets is 'hey, he's hot!' Yet for some reason, when she meets a mysterious and possibly seriously dangerous and treacherous man who refuses to explain himself to her at a very stressful time in her life, she arbitrarily decides two seconds later that 'he is hot! I am in love with him forever!' There is no rational foundation for this sudden true love. This man is simply more-hot, somehow, than the other hot men that she has so far encountered. This, by the way, is where my brain really started to liquefy, and when I seriously stopped caring about the bad situations the main character kept getting herself into with her own stupidity. If you are this stupid and shallow, as a main character, then you are officially Too Stupid to Live.

-Deus ex Machina. There, I said it. Instead of executing a believable ending to this story based on the rich and complex magic system the author has spent an entire book building up and helping us to understand, she pulls a nonsensical miracle out of her hat, and turns the main character into an uber-creature of unbelievable power and even-more-beauty-than-before. By the end of book one in this series, the protagonist has already been upgraded to the most powerful being on the face of the planet. I really don't know how the author manages to drag out any sort of conflict over the *next eight books.* Maybe she introduces another, even more uber-powerful and beautiful being in the next book, just to up the ante. Welcome to Dragonball Z: Weather Wardens Style.

In short, oh god, I really really wanted to like this book. It had a great concept, a great tagline, and an endorsement from one of my favorite authors of all time. Unfortunately, it tanked from the very first page, and then killed my last lingering hopes for it on the very last page. This book is even worse for the fact that the author had a really original idea for her setting, which she managed to thoroughly ruin with *characters.*

I do not know if Rachel Caine is hopeless as an author. I like to think she's gotten better since she wrote this book, but I am simply not ready to put myself through eight more books just to go looking for that point when she suddenly understands real sexual tension and character growth.

Go read a Harlequin. It's cheaper, it will make more sense, and it does not try to promise that it will be an intelligent read.