Rachel Caine, author of the Morganville Vampire books (the first one I reviewed here), is surprisingly prolific. She’s written at least seven books in her Weather Wardens series, published by Roc, and there are surely more to come. The Weather Warden books, unlike the Morganville Vampires, are aimed at an adult audience. Yes, that means there’s sex, but it also means that the characters are older and interested in different things. Ill Wind is the first book in this series.

Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden. Although most people don’t know it, the weather is a lot worse than we think. Sure, there are tornadoes and hurricanes and tsunamis and all sorts of awful weather-related events, but, as Jo said, they’d be so much worse without the Wardens around to keep things under control. There are three different kinds of Wardens — Weather, who control water and air; Fire, who generally contain forest fires and other things generated by lightning, but certainly help with other kinds of fires; and Earth Wardens, who stop the world from being destroyed by massive earthquakes. Wardens have Djinn who help them. In order to get a Djinn, you must be of a certain power level and certain position of authority in the organization (which is, of course, a massive bureaucracy). Jo doesn’t have a Djinn yet, and she’s in trouble, because the Wardens association thinks she’s killed someone and gone rogue.

It’s a little more complicated than that. Murder always is, isn’t it? Especially when it was self-defense. Anyway, nearly the entire book is spent in a car, on the road, so there’s a lot of physical movement. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for books that start in medias res. A significant portion of the book is also spent in flashbacks, and strangely enough, they’re effective. I generally noticed when it WAS a flashback (I missed one that confused me at first, but I was probably reading quickly) and they weren’t usually long enough to pull me out of the line of the story. I mean, she’s driving in a car from the New York area to Oklahoma City. How much time does she have to reminisce about her past, and how she got to the situation she’s currently in? Yeah. A lot. Again, the flashbacks were generally short — a couple pages — and not overwhelming.

Joanne is an interesting character, but she’s pretty much a stereotype — an early Anita Blake or Rachel Morgan-alike. Actually, she’s a lot like Rachel Morgan from Kim Harrison’s Dead Witch Walking, and the whole book has a little of that flavor, but less dark and earthy. Jo likes flashy clothing and high heels, and she’s a guy magnet — nearly every single guy in this first book is portrayed as having the hots for her in various ways. It bothered me a bit, but it was a small detail, all things considered. The fact that I kept calling Jo ‘Rachel’ in my head was a bit more of a problem, but the author has the same name, and I read her blog, so it might just be a coincidence.

Speaking of details, the information about weather-working (that is, pushing around stuff on the atomic level and above) was incredibly detailed. I hope it was accurate, because I liked it a lot. I think my favorite part of the book was ‘watching’ Jo control the weather. She approached it in an incredibly scientific way, and I’m very impressed with Caine’s research. For all I know, she has a degree in meteorology, but even so, she made the information accessible and interesting. It was a lot of fun.

The world she has built has a few holes in it — it seems as if no one really knows about the Wardens, but they don’t exactly hide and there’s a Warden degree program at Princeton, so how to people NOT know? I can dismiss that particular hole because it’s relatively minor and, also, this is book one in a series. It might be covered adequately in a future volume. I also am not 100% clear about how people become Wardens. I understand that they’re contacted by the Board, but is it once they’ve manifested powers, or are infants regularly tested, or are people monitoring for people who ‘look’ a certain way? Again, considering the brevity and speed of book one, this is information for book 2 or later.

More importantly, the book is a lot of fun, and it holds together remarkably well. If a reader enjoys the early Laurell K. Hamilton books, and Kim Harrison’s work, but isn’t reading them only for the vampires and the underworld atmosphere, I’d definitely recommend this book. (And, by extension, the series, but since I haven’t read them, I’ll just say ‘this book’.) I feel like Caine writes much better for adults than the YA age range, and I’ll give this book 4.5/5 stars.