My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Some books are warm cozy blankets that you just want to snuggle into again and again. That’s Ill Wind for me. Rachel Caine writes with a welcoming, conversational style that makes it easy to forget you’re reading. This is the book (and series) that I most like to imagine as a TV show–it would make a damned good one.
The concept is so great, you’ll wish you’d thought of it first: the natural forces in the world are not entirely science–they’re a little bit magic. And so there are teams of Wardens who can manipulate those magics, whose only jobs are to keep Mother Nature from killing us all. Humans using magic + science to stop sentient storms from destroying the earth? Why hasn’t this show been made already!? (Weather Channel should pick it up; it has a 100% chance of awesomeness.)
Our hero is Joanne Baldwin, a Weather Warden who is in way over her head. She’s too young yet to have earned her Djinn helper, but it is urgent that she get someone more powerful to aid her. Chased by Wardens who don’t know the whole story and hunted by an unknown rival, Joanne sprints off to an intense race to survive. Along the way, she discovers that everything she has been led to believe about the supernatural Djinn is way off: humans are enslaving them, twisting them to their will.
Besides, when they’re wild, they can be damn sexy–well, at least one of them, with scenes so hot it’ll make your skin sizzle.
This is my second or third read of this book, and it doesn’t stop being fun and enthralling. I can’t recommend it enough.
It’s the first in the series, and they really do get better from here.
M.E. Kinkade 