Title: Vortex
Author: Julie Cross
Publisher: Thomas Dunne
Rating: WARTY!
This is the sequel to Tempest reviewed elsewhere in this blog, and of which I developed mixed feelings, but not enough to put me off trying the second volume. Unfortunately, I ran into trouble right from the off! Tragically, there is a prologue, but Cross is sneaky: she labeled the first page as prologue and then on the next page went to a different type-face and started labeling what looked like chapters with time and date, so after I skimmed several pages, I mistakenly concluded that this was where the story began! I was tricked into reading prologue! Very sneaky.
Unfortunately for her ruse, she changed typeface again to this really nasty faux free-hand face which I refused to read because it was too much work. Novels are relaxation and entertainment, not work; I refuse to work for my entertainment and it certainly isn't relaxing to be so Vexed. yes, I said it: vexed! Cross make me cross!
I found chapter one hidden away some thirty pages in! What's up with that?! Cool trick though - she got me! When I actually started reading chapter one, I found it a bit hard to get into. It was Jackson and his "partner" Kendrick (yet Jackson is convinced he's alone and he's still having flashbacks to Holly!) training for the Tempest organization, and the training seemed pointless to me. Why would he need to be dropped onto a mountainside? When is that ever going to happen in the normal course of his activities?!
So when he and Kendrick get down to the HQ, we have to wonder why this HQ is in the foothills of the Alps! We were expressly told that their training was going to be in the Middle East in the previous novel, so their unexplained change in location is confusing at best, but it isn't as big of a mystery as is why they put their operatives at risk of being slaughtered by having them impersonate members of the EoT (Enemas of Time) to attack Jackson and Kendrick. Fortunately, their lives were saved by the fact that Jackson and Kendrick are completely incompetent!
So let's move right along, then, shall we? They're tortured in an interrogation room by their own people, but later they find out it wasn't really torture. So that's okay then, isn't it? Jackson and Kendrick failed their torture - I'm not kidding! - so they're punished for failing their torture(!) by being given an assignment to subject their partner to their worst fear! This is designed to inculcate trust! Jackson's torture is to kiss a hot babe: Jenni Stewart, whom he hates presumably because she helped him in the first novel. He successfully kisses her and she likes it, but then the red warning lights start flashing all over the HQ because there is a death threat to the German chancellor.
Naturally, the Germans, being completely and utterly incompetent and useless, have to have the Tempest team rescue their own chancellor, so the team (that is to say, four trainee operatives and two supervisors because we know for a fact that seasoned operatives are non-existent in Tempest for reasons which can never be explained to us readers.) sneak into Germany uninvited and unannounced.
With guns drawn, they encounter some EoTs, but not a single one of the Tempest team shoots a single one of the EoTs, so they pretty much all get away to cause havoc elsewhere and else when. The Tempest team discovers a bomb, but it's so futuristic that they cannot defuse it. Apparently the bomb is so futuristic that it can't be disguised to look like something other than a bomb, either, thereby making it really easy to spot. It also has a weird side-effect: it makes people stupid. It makes them so stupid that not a single one of them is smart enough to think of Jackson taking it and jumping to the middle of the ocean, let it go, and jump back!
But don't worry - there's a handy eleven year old redhead nearby who defuses the bomb. Yes, it's Emily. She couldn't apparently be bothered to tell Jackson, the first time that she saw him, that he need not show up to this bomb threat because she would defuse it, and clearly there was absolutely no need to tell him that if he did come, he should come in numbers, packing weapons because there would be eight EoTs, and why on Earth, at this point, would she bother to give him even so much as the slightest hint of what's happening, so he knows what to do and what not to do?
This sequel is becoming harder and harder to like, not least of which is because there are small parts that I do like, and reading them I feel good about it again, but then (almost inevitably it seems) the good part is rudely interrupted by another attack of Le Stupide . Nevertheless, I will try to press on and hope against hope that the good will outweigh the bad - or at least the bad will be explained so it doesn't seem so bad - as I progress further.
Well now I'm about half-way through this and Cross has done it again: she's made it interesting, but that's leavened with some confusion! They go to NYC for an assignment, and Senator Healy seems a bit creepy to me and knows far to much about Tempest and time travel. Healy wanted Jackson, for reasons unexplained, to pal up with Jenni Stewart, and he tries one night with her, but chickens out of going all the way even though she wants him to.
It's Healy's function they're to attend, and of course, Holly is there. This makes twice since he's been in NYC that Jackson has run into Holly, who is with a quarterback for a boyfriend. Knowing that her safety depends on his avoiding her like the plague, Jackson of course, pals up with her on both occasions. I'm forced to the only conclusion left to me: that Jackson is a jerk who has no regard for Holly's well-being at all. He's a selfish prick, and that's all there is to him.
At the function, all of the Tempest people in attendance behave like idiots and respond to an alert which has demanded that they all congregate in one location where they can conveniently be blown up. Fortunately, it's the same bomb which Jackson saw Emily defuse, so he naturally is the expert on defusing it. Then Cassidy, who he thinks is his mom for reasons unknown (I guess I missed that part - or glazed-eyed my way over it) grabs him and jumps him despite the fact that he and all the other operatives have taken anti-time jump medication. How that works is a mystery but by far the bigger mystery is why no one seems to think that the total failure of the anti-time jump medication is any big deal, much less something which is reportable. For that matter, how come there isn't a mass transplanting of this one time-jump gene so they can have as many time-jumpers as the EoT has?
But Jackson exhibits a new skill here - he derails Cassidy's time-jump and jumps her to a location of his own, which does her some serious damage, but not enough to prevent her jumping away again. So once again we have multiple EoT agents, and not a single one of them is killed by the Tempest crew. They they whine about there being so many enemy agents. Well DUHH! Frankly, at this point, I find myself wishing this novel had been about the EoT instead of Tempest. That novel sounds much more engrossing. Oh, and BTW, there is yet another evil organization which is different from Tempest and from EoT, but I forget the name. I'll post it later.
So now Jackson is in the apartment where his other mom lives, Eileen, who is Kevin's (his dad's) girlfriend, with a two year old Jackson and Courtney. He tries to talk her into coming with him (and the hell with the two two-year olds!) but fortunately, she's actually responsible and refuses to leave them. There is, at this point, no explanation as to why no one has time-jumped back to the castle to when the bomb was planted so they could take out the bomber nor why no one has time-jumped back to the Senator's function to when the bomb was planted so they could take out the bombers. Every single thing Tempest is doing is completely reactive; not a one of them even thinks about taking proactive action to derail these bomb plots and take out the enemy agents.
So why am I still reading this? I still have mixed feelings about it: there are parts of it which are genuinely interesting and engrossing, and these are still common enough that I'm inclined to go along with it - especially since I'm half-way through it; then no one can say I didn't give the series a fair trial. But I have to admit that it's not very easy when there is so much stuff that makes me cringe, or worse, that makes no sense even within the story's own framework.
The story continues, yet again multiple EoTs show up; yet again not a single one is killed by Tempest even though several Tempest agents have good reason to want them dead and have guns drawn. Mason, a Tempest agent is killed because he's stupid and because the Tempest agents are nothing but wimps and wusses. Stewart reacts badly to Mason's death, which somehow causes her to find out about Holly, so Jackson tells her everything and then tells Kendrick everything. He runs into Holly casing his apartment. Now she's an agent! Seriously? Despite the fact that before going into his apartment and finding Holly, he 911's Kendrick and Stewart, neither one of them shows up! How useless is this organization?! Totally inept!
Holly thinks Jackson killed Adam. Despite his not doing so, he never denies it! Later, she leads this numb-nuts directly into a trap where she puts her second hand - not her other hand, but her second hand on her gun! How many hands does Holly have and how cool would she be on a date?! As they leave the tiny room under the subway, they step out onto the tracks, say a sentence or two and are instantly outside the subway without even moving! Honestly? Le Stupide is strong with this novel.
Next, Doc Melvin is killed by Eyewall - the other other organization whose name I'd forgotten because it’s so close to eyewash. Once again we see people being killed left, right, and center, and not a single Tempest agent kills a single EoT (oh, except for when Action Jackson kills one by accident and then breaks down in tears because of it - near enough). They're so passive and so reactive instead of being proactive that at this point I'm, fully rooting for the EoTs to completely wipe-out Tempest which has repeatedly proven itself to be a complete loser organization, clueless, and brain-dead.
This story keeps getting worse and there's less and less leavening to help it out. It's sad, because Cross obviously knows how to plot and write, and a lot of the story - especially in Tempest - was good, but Le Stupide crept in even there, and it’s been far worse in Vortex. I have to wonder what went wrong. It’s like she's lost her focus and is just tossing anything and everything in there to fluff up the story and is speed-writing it without properly thinking about what she's doing or how it will sound to the reader. I can put up with mistakes, and even with goofiness and plot holes if the story is engaging and the characters make me want to root for them but I can’t root for Le Stupide!
I really wanted to like this, and believe me, I tried. Even with some misgivings after Tempest, I tried volume two, but it just became harder and harder to take it seriously when we had multiple Hollys showing up, multiple Jacksons showing up, one of which killed one of the Hollys. Multiple Emilys, Mason resurrected, Courtney resurrected. It's nothing but an unholy mess. I've never been a fan of soap opera, and this is precisely what the Tempest series has turned into. Consequently, I will not be reading any further sequels in this series. I'm tempted to go back and change the rating on Tempest after this mess, but whatever I gave that, I'll let stand and just move on to greener pastures.
