I follow Rachel Caine’s blog, and I’ve had several reminders from her that Book 7 (Gale Force) is about to be released. I thought to myself, “Self, you haven’t read books 4-6. You don’t deserve book 7.” Of course, in that sentence, I gave myself a prescription for alleviating my lack of need for book 7, and therefore set out to remedy it. Ms. Caine, by the way, also writes the Morganville Vampire series; she owns a SmartCar and holds regular contests for her readers, regarding her books and other various things. She’s also very gracious in her interactions with readers (and reviewers!).

Again, I can’t describe the plot without giving away too many elements of books 1-3, so I’ll cut it. After getting a demon mark, dying, being reborn as a djinn, and then being transmuted back to human, Joanne Baldwin’s been through a lot. At the end of the last book, having re-ended an illegal djinn-selling operation, she walked away from the Wardens. She’d found out that they weren’t exactly on the up-and-up, and although she wasn’t allowed to use her powers, she left. Now, three months later, she’s been working as a Weather Girl (routinely dressed up in bad outfits and with water dropped on her head) for a local news station with a lousy weatherman who is somehow supernaturally accurate. Subsequently, she realizes that David (her lover and sometimes djinn) is dying; her freshly-divorced sister comes to visit; a Las Vegas police officer is tailing her; and she’s got a few Weather Wardens after her, convinced that she’s messing up the local weather patterns. Just another week in the life . . .

Unlike the last three volumes, this one doesn’t start with Jo on the road. It starts with her in the TV studio; she does spend a certain amount of time in the book in a car, going fast, so for those of you who loved Joanne-in-a-car, it’s still there. She’s even found a friend — Cherise — who loves Mustangs and driving fast (and well) as much as she does. Although the plot is still fairly fast-moving, it felt like it was a notch slower than the last three volumes. I liked that, a lot, though. I felt like the pacing was in many ways more complex and subtle than the go-go-go of the last few books. Windfall was definitely still as tightly plotted as the first three volumes, but it felt . . . bigger, to me, like in some ways while writing it, Ms. Caine had stretched her skills extra far.

We meet a few new characters in this volume; the aforementioned Cherise is probably slightly more interesting than Sarah, Joanne’s sister. However, Jo and Cherise’s relationship is a good, solid friendship (for two people who haven’t known each other very long), and Jo and Sarah have a lot more dynamics going on. Sarah had decided, while young, that she would snag a rich man and be a society wife for the rest of her life; she did fairly well for a while, but then he divorced her and enforced the pre-nuptial agreement, leaving her penniless and apparently dependent on her sister. Joanne, despite her penchant for expensive shoes, has been living paycheck to paycheck the last few months, and was never as interested in living on a pedestal as Sarah was. In other words, they’re basically opposites, and don’t get along very well. They try, though, and the relationship is definitely interesting.

The overarching plot is advanced somewhat in this book; we see Lewis and Kevin again, and the organization that wants to free all the djinn. Since we’re back in Florida (Ft. Lauderdale, to be precise), we see some of the people that Joanne worked with prior to the first book and the demon-mark, and we get more information on what’s going wrong with the Wardens. There’s a brief side-idea with some Wardens who were demon-marked, but a few other loose ends were neatly tied up. It’ll be interesting to see where Ms. Caine takes (took?) it next, since it seems to have started some new threads. I’ll probably be reading book five almost as soon as I’m done with this review. 4.5/5 stars.