Do I even need to introduce Rachel Caine anymore? She’s written a lot of books, and I’ve read the majority of them (at least the ones published under ‘Rachel Caine’). I’ve also, so far, reviewed four of her Morganville Vampires series (here, here, here, and here) and five of her Weather Wardens series (here, here, here, here, and here). This is, obviously, a review of the sixth Weather Wardens books; she has a seventh out already that I have every intention of purchasing before Wednesday. Why? Because I’m eating dinner with Rachel Caine on Wednesday night. (Yeah. I am. Be jealous of me!) She writes, she’s from Texas, and she owns a Smart Car, which I believe is blue. She also drove said Smart Car through some interesting weather recently; glad to know it held up and she got there all right!

As it’s book 6, and they all still end with cliffhangers, I’m cutting plot discussion. At the very end of the previous volume, we discover that Joanne has completely lost her memory. Luckily, Lewis finds her, naked and frostbitten in the forest; he rescues her, and David shows up shortly. Unfortunately, she doesn’t remember either of them even remotely, although she does know she’s rather drawn to both. After an odd attack by some friends of theirs and an even odder transportation to Las Vegas, Jo realizes that the Demon she saw created at the end of the last book has taken on her memories and her past, and is impersonating her — and that the Wardens think that she’s the Demon. Can she get her memories back, and destroy the Demon, without ruining the world?

It was actually quite interesting, to have Jo without her memories. Obviously the dramatic tension takes over at this point — we know that David is a good guy and Eamon is a bad guy, but Jo doesn’t at the moment. We do learn quite a bit more about other people’s personal loyalties to Joanne in the book: Cherise (whom we barely know), David, Lewis, Paul, Marion, among others. Part of this is their reactions to her, without the normal filter. The rest is because Jo-without-memories acquires an ability to see other people’s memories; she’s generally looking for their memories of her, to add to her backstory, but she obviously sees more than just that. Cherise, for example: as it turns out, she really does love Jo as a best friend, and has an incredible amount of loyalty to her.

Not everything we find out during this book is good. Jo’s daughter’s fate is heartbreaking; her relationship with her sister (who is, again, back with Eamon — sort of?) is both disturbing and a little bit sad. (Only in that way where we’re supposed to believe that family is important uber alles, though.) There are power struggles going on between the humans and the djinn, between various groups of humans, and even between various groups of djinn. The fate of the planet, environmentally speaking, is still in limbo. Various parts of the country are experiencing various kinds of rapidly-changing weather; most of it isn’t good. A snowstorm threatens everyone’s life, but most of Africa is a swamp, and Australia and New Zealand are switching between winter and summer at an alarming rate, for example.

For most of the book, Jo is in very specific kinds of physical peril. First, the weather is threatening her; then the police are threatening her; then Eamon is threatening her; then the Wardens are threatening her; then the Demon (which has always been after her) is specifically in her presence and trying to kill her. It’s interesting, how this covers most of the different kinds of conflict (character vs. character, character vs. self, character vs. society, character vs. natural force). She’s also under a bit of a general threat that if she doesn’t recover her memories from the Demon, she’ll fade into nothingness. It’s very high-tension and remarkably fast-paced. Don’t worry; Jo, even without her memories, still loves fast cars, and there’s still a high-speed car chase in the desert. The only thing that bothered me a bit about the book was the ending; there was a giant slow-down before the last page. Considering that it’s part of a series and the next book is very soon to be read and reviewed, though, I can probably ignore that. 4/5 stars.