A smart, fast-paced climate action thriller with three strong women working to save humanity from itself. When the chips are down, time has run out, and all options are exhausted, world leaders have one ace left to play.
Rave Maps, the world’s greatest value engineer, has never seen anything like this. She assembles her team to convince the public of imminent catastrophe while stumbling upon a powerful corporate nemesis siphoning life-saving information and resources.
A trio of deadly women -- Rave Maps, Mait Orleans, and Kate Tong -- race from Palma to Los Angeles, Koror, Belize City, Boulder, Steamboat Springs, London, Barcelona, Brisbane, and Lady Elliot Island seeking a way to heighten awareness of the crisis on the world stage. Rave must address this threat while assessing one more; might a deadly virus reduce carbon emissions? What if it eliminates two billion people in the process? Does she try to save the planet... or the people?
A smart, fast-paced climate action thriller with three strong women working to save humanity from itself. When the chips are down, time has run out, and all options are exhausted, world leaders have one ace left to play.
Rave Maps, the world’s greatest value engineer, has never seen anything like this. She assembles her team to convince the public of imminent catastrophe while stumbling upon a powerful corporate nemesis siphoning life-saving information and resources.
A trio of deadly women -- Rave Maps, Mait Orleans, and Kate Tong -- race from Palma to Los Angeles, Koror, Belize City, Boulder, Steamboat Springs, London, Barcelona, Brisbane, and Lady Elliot Island seeking a way to heighten awareness of the crisis on the world stage. Rave must address this threat while assessing one more; might a deadly virus reduce carbon emissions? What if it eliminates two billion people in the process? Does she try to save the planet... or the people?
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Cycling focuses the mind. Next pedal stroke. Next breath. Keep cadence. Watch the road. Ease pressure on wrists and neck. Heels out. Elbows in. Change gears. Check speed. Repeat.
Mait Orleans continued pedaling. She was making her way up a steep, narrow stretch of twisty MA-10, Mallorca’s most scenic and difficult ride. Mait focused on her breathing, tackling her third large hill. MA-10 was as challenging a ride as the guidebook suggested. She had been passed by pelotons—uniformed groups of riders working in synchronized cadence—from several countries. She had passed a few lone cyclists like herself as well, each intent on reaching the top of the next rise.
Mait reached a plateau running along the top of a cliff. Feeling a small thrill of victory, she paused to step off the bike and stretch, enjoying a spectacular view of the ocean. She saw choppy seas driven by a breeze from the northwest, and the air smelled clean and sweet. The silence was pierced by screeches from a pair of the islands thirty-nine rare Bonelli’s eagles that floated lazily overhead, riding powerful updrafts racing up the cliff.
Mait got back on the bike, setting off once more. She had become used to how close cars came to riders on this route. Sometimes a sideview mirror would be inches from her handlebars; there was no maneuvering room on the narrow road. Fortunately, drivers in Mallorca are accustomed to avoiding cyclists and take great care passing.
It didn’t strike Mait as unusual then when one more vehicle, a Spanish-made SEAT Ateca SUV, pulled alongside. No other cars or cyclists were in sight. It took just a tap from the side view mirror to flick Mait’s handlebars right, sending her off the road to the cliff’s edge. No guardrails here. It happened so fast, Mait was unable to react. She fought to correct her steering, risking a glance in the car window. No one inside. Driverless car.
Her next surprise came as her front tire crunched over the lip, pulling her, bike and all, over the edge. She was falling.
Mait Orleans, a highly analytical former naval officer, not a person to be trifled with, found herself feeling detached from the situation. Instead of screaming, she began reflecting on the failure cascade that led to her being here. As she tumbled through space, she felt time slow. She began thinking. Could she sort out what she might do to mitigate this fatal situation? Could she find something, anything, that might help turn it to her advantage?
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The blurb for Daughter of the Storm promises "a smart, fast-paced climate action thriller with three strong women working to save humanity from itself." It is indeed a smart thriller, one that incorporates aspects of artificial intelligence, climate science, environmental activism, green technology, and the ruthlessness of capitalism. I found the pacing rather slow/uneven, however, often being interrupted by info dumping and unnecessary details around hobbies and habits. While these are details that, when used sparingly, can help set a scene or establish a character, they overwhelm the story when it's a novella of 160 pages.
Rave Maps, Mait Orleans, and Kate Tong are an interesting trio of protagonists, and it was for them that I kept reading. They were unique, sometimes even unorthodox, characters, and the unexpected ways in which they responded to situations kept the story feeling fresh. The villain, LaMarque, was almost cartoonish in her portrayal, which is a distinct contrast to the heroines, but entirely in fitting with the James Bond-esque plot.
And that's where I struggled the most with this book, and am honestly still unsure how I feel about it. We have realistic heroines put up against a cartoonish villain; scientifically-backed, altruistic activism versus greedy capitalism; and clever, plausible uses of technology clashing with preposterous acts of evil. It's like a pulp adventure serial with pages of Scientific American or National Geographic randomly inserted, and sometimes the bridging between styles is so abrupt as to be jarring.
All that said, Daughter of the Storm was a very different read, and for all the indecisiveness I had about it, I never stopped reading. I wanted to see the women succeed . . . I wanted to see the villain thwarted . . . and (most importantly) I wanted to know *how* it would all be done. Globe's novella was uneven, but full of promise, and I would not say 'no' to another adventure with Rave and Mait.