Melissa Good

My thought before reading this was that I was not sure I was ready for this one. I do believe that when I first read it online there was quite a lot of skimming going on, and so, I really had to prevent myself fro doing that this time.

And, I was right, this one took me a lot longer than it should have to read. Especially when I got to Chapter Seven or so. After that it was a bit easier to read, because it was more about rebuilding than about destruction, but, those first chapters. First show more anticipating what was going to happen on the date of 9/11/2001, and then reading what happened. Can 17 years still be too soon?

But, all that has to do with what I was feeling while reading it, not with the actual book. The actual book is just as good as all her others in this series, if not better in some ways.

Dar and Kerry and everyone are trying to rebuild in the direct aftermath of 9/11. Trying to keep ILS's systems up, while also rebuilding a network in one of the most important cities on the East Coast, oh, and trying to get the Pentagon back up and running too. Not to mention, through all this, sparring with the government over and over. Oh, and Dar and Kerry are trying to get to one another as well.

As I implied above, it was an intense and emotional book. And while I know there are some readers who don't like the amount of techy stuff that happened during this book. But, I thought that all the stuff they were talking about on their Central Board/IM thingie was super interesting, and I'm not going to pretend that I understood all or most of it, but, the stuff I did was fun to read (yes, in fact, I do play a nerd in my life). I thought it gave the novel a depth and verisimilitude.

Oh, and I want to end the review with a quote that I felt was just perfect when it came to how I personally felt while living thorugh 9/11. A minor character, a Chief in the Military says, "Have you ever wanted to hit someone, but you ain't got a target, young lady? I just want to find the people who thought this was a great and noble thing to do and keep hitting them until their guts come out on the floor." show less

This picks up right after Book 1 ends (actually, has some of the same scene as the end of the first book). Dar and Kerry are on their way to New York City to try and save the financial world. First they have to get an emergency center set up for the Governor of New York in a place where, really, it shouldn't be data/networking wise.

And then it's on to the stock exchange with the problems there all piling on top of one another until it seems pretty insurmountable.

It was a helluva ride. And show more while I know that it wasn't dripping with verisimilitude like the first one (or maybe it was and we, the rest of the country, just don't know it). The characters were awesome, and I know that I very much enjoyed the story (it's fiction, for anyone who doesn't like superhero Dar and Kerry, have we all forgotten that fiction is supposed to be an interesting romp through life but doesn't have to be 100% real and perfectly life like?)

I will say, though, that I'm not crazy about the portrayal of menstruation/periods in this series. 4-6 hours? Maybe a day of pain? I would kill for only double, hell, triple that a month. But, as I said, that's not just in this book, but in the whole series, and thankfully in most of the other books it's maybe a line or too, it just seemed to be really emphasized here for whatever reason.

Other than that I loved the book though, and, it was a good ending to the emotional roller coaster of the first one. show less

The second book in the Dar and Kerry series and just like the first one, chock full of plot. When you read a Melissa Good novel, you get a ton of plot for your money. Sure there are interesting descriptions and metaphors and such in there, but these books are all about what's happening and such not foofy pontificating.

To start off an old adversary of Dar's gets hired at the company. He wants to take Dar down and seems to want to do it by any means necessary. Then the adversary as well as all show more the other big VPs in the Miami office go on a 'team building' retreat not in the boonies, but wayy beyond the boonies and that's quite an eventful trip.

Another of the plots, and my favorite of them in this book was Dar and Kerry having to sort of import a network center that goes down (and down hard) in North Carolina. I only knew about half of the stuff that they were talking about, but Good wrote it so that the thrust of the action was easily understandable whether or not you know anything about router tables and Ethernet hubs.

And even when Dar and Kerry takes time off in North Carolina it's exciting.

Finally there's the last scene on an island off of Florida. It's an amazing scene and it's not just one of my favorite scenes in Hurricane Watch, but in the entire series.

I also love all the little super subtle Uber Xena allusions and easter eggs that Good has scattered throughout the narrative. The reader doesn't have to know anything about the Xena fics that Good wrote, and the whole novel more than stands on its own, but, if you do get the references it makes the book an even cooler one. show less

Ah, so I have read the web version of this book so many times since it was put up way back when I'd lost count. But, this was my first reading of the published book. They are definitely different, although not as drastically different as I thought it might be.

The novel is crammed full of story, and so here and there it comes across as a bit wordy, but, I'd much rather have too much story than no story.

It centers around two women. Dar, a Corporate VP, and Kerry, the director of a small show more company that just got swallowed by said Corp. It's not a surprising romance plot. The same sort has been done forever. A character who's in charge, but too much in charge, and then a second character stands up tot he first. And the first falls in love with the second and vice versa. In this case, Dar and Kerry are the two women who fall in love.

How they fall in love felt almost real. It's not like some books where first the two main characters get together and then the problems and twists happen. In this book, they slowly get to know each other as their relationship progresses.

There are various corporate disasters that they get to deal with as well as a couple of personal ones too.

I really liked the dreams that both Dar and Kerry have at different points in the story. They're cool like Easter Eggs that work in the story on multiple levels. I also liked that there were parts here and there in the novel that got a bit thriller-ish, and the inner monologues of most of the characters were some of the best I've ever read.

It's a great read. Some of the tech stuff is a teeny tiny bit out of date-ish, but the story resonates across the years. show less