Eye of the Sh*t Storm
by Jackson Ford
DETAILS: Series: Frost Files, #3 Publisher: Orbit Publication Date: April 27, 2021 Format: eBook Length: 512 pg. Read Date: July 20-24, 2023
And now I’m trapped under a collapsed bridge, in a burning van, having just taken a faceful of meth, while a biker gang shoots at me and my friends with automatic weapons.
We’ve all been there.
What’s Eye of the Sh*t Storm About?
Obviously, spoilers for the previous book are going to come into play here…if you’re concerned about that, skip to the stars at the bottom and move on. Actually, I’ll make it easy for you: ★ ★ ★ ★. Proceed at your own risk.
It’s been two months since Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air, L.A. (and the rest of California) is still struggling to deal with the loss of infrastructure, lives, jobs, and sense of normalcy that had been ripped from them. Teagan and her team have resumed their work as best as they can.
The book opens just as a mission to uncover an illegal gun sales ring goes horribly awry—leading to my opening quotation. Before the team has a chance to recover from this debacle, they’re sent to investigate a strange occurrence that is right up their alley. A storage unit complex—the entire thing, from asphalt to walls to ceilings and everything in between—has become electrically charged. Technically, that’s impossible, right? But so are psychokinetics like Teagan and the earthquake-inducing little boy we met in the last book.
Teagan figures out a way to get her inside the complex and discovers the cause–another little boy. About the same age as the one she faced off with two months ago. But this boy is different—he’s scared. He’s not in control of his power at the moment because he just wants his dad and to get away from “the Zigzag Man” (whoever that is). Teagan knows her job is to bring the kid in and turn him over to the authorities. But she can’t do that—this boy, Leo, isn’t out to hurt anyone. He’s not trying to fry California or anything. He just wants his dad, and Teagan can’t imagine subjecting Leo to the experiments and testing that he’d be subjected to if she did her job.
So, she goes AWOL, hoping to reunite Leo with his family before she figures out what to do with her employers. She’s eventually tracked down by her friends—some agree to help her, some try to apprehend Leo. Things get messy from there. And they all learn pretty quickly that Leo was right to want to get as far away as humanly possible from the Zigzag Man.
Reggie
Of the group, the character we’ve spent the least amount of time with. This makes sense—she’s the “woman in the chair,” as Ned Leeds would put it. She’s their hacker, their supervisor, the one calling the shots from home base and doing what she can to dig up information for them in the field. She’s also in a wheelchair, limiting what she can do in the field (but she pushes those limits as often as possible).
This book solves the we-don’t-get-to-spend-time-with-Reggie problem by giving her several point-of-view chapters. When we’re not with Teagan, we’re with her. And I loved it—I’d take a Reggie solo story anytime. She’s just a rich character—getting to focus on her and having some of her backstory filled in are just great. She had a pretty impressive résumé already, but what she accomplishes here proves that Teagan’s not the only impressive one on the team (that could be said for all of them, really, but I want to focus on Reggie).
Her future looks pretty different going into Book 4 than it has so far—but I’m looking forward to seeing what she does in this new stage of life. I predict things will look better for her within the next 400 pages than it does now.
I Didn’t Expect This To Come Up
There’s a subplot running through all this where Teagan deals with the come down from an accidental (and large) exposure to meth and struggles to experiment with it some more. This is due to the withdrawal symptoms she’s suffering, and also because it turns out that meth supercharges her abilities for a brief period and that sounds really handy right now.
Now, I don’t know how realistic all the non-superpower effects of meth and the temptation to use it again so soon are. But it feels real. And the fact that I have to clarify “non-superpower” does put us outside the realm of realism already.
Teagan goes through a lot in this book (and series), but the way she looks into the temptation of great power at a great cost and cannot shake it immediately was really well depicted and—so far—the most compelling. This temptation keeps calling her name, she’s able to justify/allllllllmost justify experimenting with the drug. And maybe giving herself over entirely to the addiction.
Teagan’s Growth
I reacted… poorly. Hey, just because I’ve been trying to think through my decisions doesn’t mean I’m perfect, OK?
This is already longer than I’d planned, so I’m going to be brief here—in my post about Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air I talked about Teagan’s growth in terms of power and maturity—and how far she has to go. That’s still present, but she’s making progress—and she’s aware of her need.
I think she gives herself more credit than she deserves in this quest up to this point—but she’s moving in the right direction. And who wants a perfect protagonist anyway?
So, what did I think about Eye of the Sh*t Storm?
Over the past few years, I’ve become very familiar with the giant spurt of adrenaline you get after surviving something that should have killed you.
It always arrives around five minutes after I nearly die, beginning with a prickle on my arms, a delightful tremor in my fingers. Then a feeling of well- being, flooding through me, quickly growing to a kind of hysterical euphoria. It’s like an old friend by now. One I’ve been hanging out with for so long that I know everything they’re going to do before they do it.
There was a point where my eReader was at risk of flying through a window. Thankfully for the sake of marital harmony (and my poor eReader), that didn’t happen (my notes read, “No no no no no no no no,” and I was able to limit it to that). Frost has demonstrated that no character is safe, the status quo is not respected, and that readers should not think that anything is settled. This is not a bug, this is a feature. Not necessarily one that promotes emotional health in a reader, however, but it’s a feature.
What Ford’s cavalier attitude toward my blood pressure does is heighten every moment, intensify every conflict (even if it doesn’t seem like it’s time for a major happening), and keeps you focused throughout as you speed through the pages.
I’ve been annoyed with myself for not staying on top of this series since the summer of 2020—and now that I’m almost caught up—I’m even more annoyed with myself. But for now, I’m just happy I got this posted so I can move on to the next book in a few days.
If you’re into super-hero-adjacent kind of stories, this series is a must-read. Could you do okay by starting with this book? Sure—Ford won’t let you get lost and will help you get oriented in the midst of things. But do yourself a favor and start with the first book and do it soon.
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