Firestorm, Rachel Caine. The fifth entry in Caine's Weather Warden series takes awhile to get started, but drags the series into familiar yet unsettling territory. 

Up to this point, Joanne has fallen for an immortal djinn, become a djinn, died, had many aetheric adventures, and birthed a daughter who appears to be the same age as her, despite being only two days old.  With me so far?  (The back history of the Warden series makes jumping in with this book as complicated as delving into Buffy's series 6.)  This time round, the djinn are kicking ass and taking names, no longer tied to their Warden masters.  There are demons being birthed, marks passed round, and Mother Nature's waking up from her nap rather angry with the state of things.  Caine plays the maternal card well, and gives us one hell of a set up for the next novel, but the pacing is rather uneven, and at times feels like the author shaking the snowglobe of her world just to see what happens.  Without another book to look at, it's hard to say just how the earth-shattering events of Firestorm will pan out.

Read May 2007