Book Review - The Wind Guardian by Frank Scozzari

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for reviewing it.  It took a bit of time to get through this book with trying to read it over the busy and highly distracting Christmas season.  The terrorist action plot is not my favorite genre, but I have no regrets in taking the time to read The Wind Guardian.  This is an honest and unbiased review.

The Wind Guardian is the first Frank Scozzari book I have read.  If you are looking for a terrorist threat action story that is driven by the characters and does not get lost in the details then you will enjoy this book.

This story is set in the comfort of a United States nuclear power facility where years of living comfortably safe leaves bored security officers with a lackadaisical attitude towards their jobs and the painstaking planning and work that goes into the security of the plant.  Despite the best efforts of their supervisor, John Harkin, to keep his security officers alert and performing diligently to their by-the-book routine, some of his staff continually take a careless approach to their jobs, sneaking off for illicit rendezvous and naps.  The reason for their jobs, threat of terrorist attack, is a world away for our characters.

In The Wind Guardian, Frank Scozzari brings the self-absorbed lives of two characters, newly enamored lovers and co-workers, Cameron and Grace crashing down in a seeming unstoppable catastrophe.  Other developments are in play while Cameron communes with nature in the “bone yard”, a protected archeological and burial site of the native Chumash, who he came to feel an affinity with, and Grace and he focus on trying to find ways to communicate on the shared open radio channel and meet up on the job.  The pair makes the most unlikely of heroes, and are thrust in the center of events by their own selfish choices to put their mindless lust and an obsession with each other worthy of teenagers over their duties.

While Frank Scozzari pauses in the action to fill the reader in on the workings of the nuclear facility and the bureaucracy, planning, routine, and weapons behind keeping it safe, he does it expertly without bogging down the story in the details.  If anything, the tedium of guarding the plant and all the details that ago into it is a good set up for what is coming.  The obvious tedium of the characters jobs and their lack of interest in performing them makes the events that unfold, and how easily, more believable.

Frank Scozzari brings home in a realistic way just how easily the safety we take for granted can be taken away.

The Wind Guardian by Frank Scozzari is available through various online retailers.