I had dinner with Rachel Caine a couple weeks ago! She was in town (well, in Youngstown) to do a couple presentations on vampires through history at the library down there; apparently the presentations were awfully well-attended, and at some point she means to put up a Power Point version of it on her website. When that happens, be sure I’ll link to it. She was utterly delightful; we discussed vampires (did you know that Tolstoy wrote a vampire story?), beer (there was a beer at our restaurant called Nosferatu, so it fit the theme), reptiles (who apparently sulk much longer than cats or dogs ever would), and my (at the time) upcoming wedding. (It was only two weeks away at that point. I was a bit excited.) That, of course, became more relevant as I read Gale Force . . . (All the previous reviews are linked in this entry.)

Cliffhanger + book 7 = cut. Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden still; she’s practically in charge of a lot of things now, because like Lewis (who is actually in charge), she can control all three elements: weather, fire, and earth. Unfortunately, there’s a great big threat — some organization, calling itself ___, has managed to kill a djinn and create some sort of anti-matter that kills a Warden and nearly kills Jo herself. The weird part? The djinn can’t see the packages containing the anti-matter, and the djinn who died was wiped from their collective memory completely. There’s a bit of a rift between Jo and her lover David (the leader of the Free Djinn) over this, but he had asked her to marry him, and he still wants to. She stilll wants to, despite everything. Can they find out what’s going on with this organization, and with the anti-matter stuff, AND get Jo and David married without mishap?

Well, no. Jo manages to destroy two bridal shops, and to kill more than one wedding dress. (I found that very amusing, although I made it all the way through my own wedding mess without going anywhere near a bridal shop.) They also have trouble with just the logistics of the wedding in many cases — they’d like to have it at the temple of the Earth Oracle (for obvious reasons, if one has read the previous books), but that turns out not to be possible. Similarly, who is going to marry them? David isn’t even human, and they can’t apply for a standard marriage license if he doesn’t have the standard identification. What religion is even going to admit that David isn’t pure evil? Cherise, of course, turns out to be a big help in this matter, as one might expect.

I thought the anti-matter stuff was pretty gross and rather awesome. I don’t know much about antimatter except what I’ve learned from Star Trek, but I’m always excited to see it in other places. The fact that the djinn couldn’t even perceive it was pretty strange, but handled believably. What was even stranger than that was the absolute erasure of the djinn destroyed by the antimatter stuff. I can’t possibly even imagine what would happen if an entire human being was erased from reality. Of course, it’s what they tried to do to Jo in the last volume, but it’s still creepy as all-get-out.

As usual, I love the characters; I love the pacing; and I love this series. I’ve heard that it’s going to be capped at nine volumes, which seems like it’s a great length for a series with this premise. There’s at least one spinoff series coming out of it; the first book in that series, Outcast Season: Undone (book 1 of 4), is due out in February of 2009. Book 8 of this series is due fall of next year (Cape Storm), and I can’t wait for either. Joanne has a difficult but very interesting life; she has some amazing friends (Cherise, Lewis), a really super-hot man in her life (ohh, David), and I’d love to see more of it. 4/5 stars.