Sometimes you pickup a book at the book store on the off-chance, in the hopes that it will at least be entertaining enough that you feel you got your money’s worth. Sometime you are disappointed, sometimes you are reasonably happy and rarely, so rarely are you totally blown away.
So it was with Ill Wind by Rachel Caine . I bought the book on impulse, taking a chance on an author I’d never read before, something I rarely do these days, preferring, usually to stick with authors who have become like old friends. To say I was pleasantly surprised by this book is an understatement, ILL WIND literally blew me away. It sat on my coffee table for several days while I consumed ‘Paul of Dune’ by Herbert and Anderson, which left a bitter taste in my mouth because while that novel was sufficiently entertaining that I did NOT rush back to the book shop demanding a refund it still felt like a cynical milking of Herbert Senior’s reputation. ILL WIND washed the bitter taste away almost from the first page, gripped me in its vortex, and took me on the wildest ride imaginable. The book is about a ‘weather warden’ in fact its subtitled ‘Weather Warden book one’ which bodes well for more of the same or better, basically the heroine is a girl that can control the weather. A reasonably good idea for a novel, any half way decent writer could run with it. Rachel Caine didn’t just run with it though, she had a ball and though I know it sounds cliché I could not put the book down. Some books are suitable for winding your mind down sufficiently to get a good nights sleep, a few pages or maybe a chapter before you turn out the light, and some books you have to devour from cover to cover in one sitting, ILL WIND is the latter type.
