Weatherman by Price Doom

Weatherman by Price Doom
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Heart and her father are on the run from God. At least, that’s what her father, Sonny, tells her. Young Heart believes Sonny’s stories of dying suns and scientists with tranquilizer guns, parachuting out of planes in pursuit of them . Sonny believes only the elements in his body can save the sun, and Heart grows up in fear of the boogeymen from Sonny’s stories—and Sonny himself. After years without proof and questions about Sonny’s mental stability, Heart makes her escape.
Imagine growing up while on the run from people with unlimited resources.

Sonny was an excellent example of how to write a deeply unlikeable character. There were very few complimentary things I could say about him as a parent or an individual, and yet I was fascinated by the way his mind worked. This was especially true when he was confronted with evidence that contradicted his beliefs about the spirit world or what the limits were of his magical powers. He had an uncanny ability to explain everything in a way that fit his version of logic. That made me want to learn more about him.

The mystery elements of the storyline were confusing to me. There were multiple hints pointing at one solution, so I wasn’t expecting the ending that happened at all. It seemed to point to a completely different resolution than the one that the narrator had spent so much time building up to, although it was also vague enough that I was never entirely certain which option the author wanted their fans to think was most likely to be true. I generally enjoy ambiguous endings, especially in these genres, but this one left so much up to the imagination that I never felt satisfied by it.

There was a plot twist about two-thirds of the way through the book involving Heart’s past that I was pleased to see. It helped to answer some important questions that both the audience and Heart had been pondering for a while at that point. After all of the hints from earlier scenes, I was happy to see these things being resolved as much as they could.

I also struggled with Heart’s contradictory character development. She wasn’t written consistently enough for me to figure out if her occasional but dangerous lapses in judgement were out of character for her or if I’d misjudged her personality entirely. It was also hard for me to figure out why her opinions on certain topics like searching for her mother changed so rapidly. I understood why that topic was a sensitive one for her, but it seemed odd to me that she’d feel a deep yearning for answers about her origins in one scene only to give up on it in the next.

The horror elements of the storyline were well done. Heart’s childhood was so out of the ordinary that her innocent descriptions of things that would frighten anyone else made me shudder. The author did a good job of showing just how much humans can adapt to their surroundings and find meaning almost everywhere. That isn’t easy to accomplish in horror at all, but it’s one of the things that keeps pulling me back into this genre from time to time.

Weatherman was a thought-provoking tale that was equally at home in the science fiction and mystery genres.