Review: Hardwired for Ecstacy by Ravenna Tate

Heavy sigh…Ravenna Tate’s “The Weathermen” series is inching ever closer to the end. I’m truly going to miss it. It’s one of my favorites of all time. They’re all well written, detailed, topical, sexy, and above all things, unique. The subject matter is a little on the alarming side because it deals with what could happen if something that was designed to do good, ends up being hacked by people who are out to do something bad. Sometimes, technology isn’t such a helpful thing.

Every time I review a “Weatherman” story, I like to give a quick rundown as to what happened to the world. In the year 2112, a group of scientists create a computer program they’ve called The Madeline Project. It’s goal is to release electrical pulses into clouds to try to prevent catastrophic storms like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and blizzards. In 2117, a real time test proves to be relatively successful, but there is a group of hackers who upload a virus into the project, and what happens is exactly what The Madeline project was trying to prevent. Apocalyptic storms make 85% of the Earth completely uninhabitable. Those who didn’t die in the storms have moved underground into “cities” built several years before during a nuclear war scare. A group of 12 very wealthy men, college friends, calling themselves “The Weathermen” are doing whatever they can to try to find, capture, and punish the hackers. They want to try to rebuild the surface to that people can return home.

The problem has become urgent. There are only (at most) three years of oxygen left in the underground cities. If something can’t be done, the survivors of the storm will all suffocate, and all will be lost. Atticus Yates, founder and CEO of Yates Industries, has hired Emma Sawyer to help him work on a project. He and the other Weathermen have been working on finding the hackers, of course, but he wants to design something that will help other companies in the future (a device, software, and app, etc.). Emma has the perfect background to do this. Since this is EXTREMELY confidential, he seems almost leery to discuss the details with Emma, but he does. He also mentions to her, if she has anything in her background that can put this project in danger, she’ll be fired. Unfortunately, there is something that was missed, and it causes some conflict nearly right away.

Ok, first of all, let me say I did love this book. It was a very important part of the series as a whole, and it helped to fill in quite a few pieces of the ongoing, underlying mystery of who the hackers are, can they be caught, and can they be made to reverse the virus so the world can be saved. The plot is well fleshed out. The details of the underground city of “Central” are perfect. I was able to see everything, right down to the steak and lobster Atticus served Emma when she came to his place. Emma was great, even though she’d suffered quite a bit of loss and embarrassment at the hands of other people. All she wanted to do is get a job in her chosen IT field (those jobs are hard to come by now), and do something to help others. The background characters all fit into the story nicely, and weren’t just there to take up space, and the sex scenes were smoking hot. REALLY smoking hot. All of this was awesome, but I have to confess I didn’t care much for Atticus. Like all the Weathermen, he’s confident and goes after what he wants and needs. I just found him to be arrogant and even rude at some points. After he finds an issue in Emma’s background, he orders her to his office where he gives her the third degree, makes her tell him about personal things that hurt her, and he makes her cry. THEN, he tells her she’s pretty, and he wants to go out with her. Also, after they’d been intimate and they were actively falling for each other, something bad happens (not giving it away), and he pushes her away (not very nicely at all) thinking she may have done something to stab them all in the back without giving her any chance to explain anything. I was crying along with her by then. I felt the hurt she was feeling. When he finds her at her apartment, he tells her he thought he’d lost her for good, and says what she did was “shitty”. Um…HELLO! You were mean to her. I was ticked off she forgave him so quickly. Seriously, the man needed to do some deep kneed groveling.

Oh well. As I said, Atticus’ behavior aside, I loved the story. Everything is coming together so well, and even though I’m going to really miss these guys, I can’t wait to see how it’s all going to end. I highly recommend this story. I have to say, though, this should NOT be read as a standalone. You can’t just jump in and expect to know what’s going on. You have to start at book one, “Appetite for Blackmail” and follow along all the way. Please do, though. You’ll find yourself as wrapped up as I am.