reviewed by
LOLA SPARKS
Sometimes, I want to remind Joanne Baldwin to breathe. It doesn't seem like she gets much of a chance to do that these days.
The world is falling apart--or rather, waking up. The centuries-long agreement between Djinn and Wardens is shattered and the Djinn are now free of mortal control. Add to that Mother Nature waking up from a long sleep. She's more than a little pissed at what humanity has done to her world. When she wakes up fully, things worse than Katrina will be headed our way.
The Djinn's new leader is Joanne's lover, David. David also happens to be the father of Joanne's daughter, Imara. Imara isn't fully human or fully Djinn, which places her in an awkward place. Joanne is also in an awkward place; she doesn't know how to be a mother to a daughter who is suddenly fully grown. (Maybe she should get with Stargate's Vala and they could have a chat about their daughters.)
Over the course of the book, Joanne runs for her life, tries to save the world, encounters demons, Demon Marks, oracles; finds time for a little bit of sex, deals with hostile Wardens, deals with hostile Djinn, gets hot over racy cars, worries about her sister's plight (which carries over from book four, Windfall), and...never seems to breathe!
Caine keeps up the super-quick pace of Joanne's world, making this reader wish the girl could get a vacation. Just something small. Can't she and David run away to an alternate reality for a few hours (that might feel like a few days) and simply be? Firestorm is a quick read that remains hard to put down (you can't put it down, not with the way the plot races), and the cliffhanger ending is hard to take, especially when Thin Air won't be out until summer 2007.
