Jackson Ford’s series continues to entertain! If you’re a fan of action-packed, fast-paced fun, then you should definitely give this series a try. Definitely recommended.

Jackson Ford's irreverent story Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air is as fun as the title suggests. Seriously, I laughed out loud a few times. and that's surprising with this being a sequel. Sometimes middle books can fall flat but not this one! My favorite protagonist type is snarky. GIVE ME ALL THE SNARK. Give me a bit of attitude espcailly in this kind of world. We need the energy. I enjoy a good bit of snark and a well-placed quip. I also enjoy it when people lose their sh*t and are fed up with your antics, which is Teagan, in a nutshell. Teagan is a woman, put in ridiculous situation after ridiculous situation over 22 hours. Oh, she is also The Girl Who Can Move Sh*t With Her Mind. So the jobs she deals within this novel are... a bit out of the ordinary.

It is fun and silly. Teagan makes stupid choices and shows her naivete, but damn, is this an engaging story. Teagan's revelations allowed her character to expand and be a bit more than just action. This growth is an essential and wise choice on the part of Jackson Ford. It made this story more than action and wise-cracking. It gave it some heart, some sorrow, and a little pluck.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Orbit for an eARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

I’ve been absolutely dying for this book since the first book ended and at the very end, there was the title of this book, and I immediately knew I had to have it. Just yes. So I’ve waited for just shy of an eternity for this, and was it worth it? No, okay? I mean, yes, but no, it was not because now I have to wait for another eternity for the next book, and IT’S EVEN WORSE THIS TIME. *screams in cliffhanger*

Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air combines my love for natural disaster books with my love for sarcastic protagonists, ramped up the action, and packed a whole lot of feels in, just for good measure.

Don’t get me wrong, there were feels at the end of The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, but they didn’t really get me. I sort of saw them coming and it was okay. This was just one thing after another, things I didn’t see coming, and it was a ride. Buckle in, folks. It’s about to get rocky … which that pun will make so much more sense if you read the book.

My Thoughts:

- I cannot begin to tell you how much I’ve missed Teagan and her sarcastic voice. The very first line of this book instantly felt like coming home to an old friend. One who probably badmouthed you while you were gone (not that you didn’t deserve it), is only mildly thrilled to see you again, and is likely to accidentally get you in trouble and/or bodily harm shortly after you arrive. But hey, what are friends for, am I right? I’ve always thought Teagan was such a relatable character, especially as a reluctant hero, and this book just made her even more so, as she really struggles with PTSD and trust issues stemming from what happens in the first book. I particularly enjoyed Teagan’s arc in this, because it felt like she had a chance to come into her own a bit more and decide, once and for all, who she wants to be.

- Not only are all the old characters back (okay, most of the old characters because … you know), but there’s some new ones to fall in love with this time around. There’s obviously the old Chop Shop crew that was of course going to be in this book, but their dynamic has changed now, with everything that’s happened. There’s much more of a team vibe going on, but a tenuous one, because now there’s the whole “trust no one” thing that happens in the aftermath of betrayal. My favorite addition to the cast was easily Schmidt, the super sexy (in my head, at least, cut a girl some slack) German billionaire, who happens to be really bad at being rich. Perfect match for the spy who’s really bad at being a spy, hmmm? Even though there’s not really any romance in this book for Teagan, I ship this. I may be the only one, but I will go down with this ship, if need be.

- There’s new powers introduced in this, and the main one will have you quaking in your boots. It might have a bit of a rocky start, but you’re in for a definite shock when you realize the extent of this power. It’ll definitely make you tremble.

… it’s earthquakes, guys. This book has an earthquake. Yes, I am proud of my puns. I have no shame. As a major fan of natural disaster movies and books, I was 100% into having the West Coast destroyed by an earthquake. This delivered all the best parts of natural disaster movies that I absolutely love (like the community coming together, the threat, the high stakes, the shocking aftermath) without coming across as totally cheesy and overdone.

- Since this is book two, you might think you know what to expect, but trust me, the feels are dialed up to an 11 here. There are so many obvious ways that a book like this can tug at the heartstrings, especially given the obvious earthquake scenario, but it touched me in surprising ways. I mean, there’s the-thing-that-shall-not-be-named, which obviously devastated me. But more than that, natural disasters suck, guys. Bad things happen during and after them. That was the setting, and that was still even the least of the feels. Don’t get me wrong, the book is still funny, and I laughed the whole time. I just didn’t expect it to be as much of an emotional roller coaster as it was.

Sticking Points:

- I really wanted something more from the Big Bad in this. Especially since he was really a Minor Malevolence. Literally. He’s a minor. Oh, sure, his evil was on a grand scale, but it was super hard to reconcile the fact that this is a little kid with the fact that he’s clearly a genius psychopath. I know, I know, psychopaths don’t need a reason, and that’s good and fine, but it makes for a really unsatisfactory villain for me, because he sounds like an adult, and I had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t. And then every time I thought that, I got mad at the adults surrounding him.

The nitty-gritty: Another fun entry into Ford's Frost Files series, get ready for earthquakes, snarky characters, an evil genius child, and plenty of sh*t flying around.

I had a blast reading last year’s The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind, and I’ve been really looking forward to the sequel. Last week, when I found myself in a bit of a reading slump, I decided to pick it up, knowing it might do the trick. And it did, in spades! Jackson Ford delivers a high-octane sequel that’s just as much fun as the first book, and even now, having finished it, I’m a little sad that my time with these characters has come to an end—at least until the next book comes out. And even though this is book two in the series, I can safely assure new readers that you can easily pick this one up without having read the first book. Ford does a good job of inserting some of the more important backstory elements in an unobtrusive way, although I urge you to read the first book since it’s so much fun.

Teagan Frost has psychokinesis, or “PK” as she calls it. She has the uncanny ability to move inorganic objects with her mind, and after spending two years in a secret government testing facility in Waco, Texas, Teagan now works for a woman named Moira Tanner. Tanner rescued her from the Waco facility in exchange for joining a crack team of civilians who help take out threats to national security. It’s kept Teagan off the government’s radar—who would love to get their hands on her and use her unique abilities for nefarious purposes—but she’s not completely “free” since she has to follow rules and basically do whatever Tanner wants her to do.

When the story opens, Teagan and the rest of the crew—Reggie, Africa, Annie and Paul—have been tasked with stealing a top secret list from a German millionaire named Jonas Schmidt, before he sells the damaging information to the highest bidder. Schmidt’s private jet is waiting for him at the Van Nuys airport while he meets with his clients, and Teagan and her friends must break into the jet before he returns and steal the list from the plane’s safe. Unfortunately, in the middle of the operation, a devastating earthquake hits Los Angeles, sending the city into turmoil. Reggie, who is back at headquarters monitoring the event, has noticed some odd occurrences just prior to the quake and suspects that the earthquake may have been caused by a little boy who seems to be able to control soil and rocks with his mind.

Making their way through an apocalyptic landscape full of broken freeways, toppled skyscrapers and shell shocked, suddenly homeless people, Teagan and her friends set out to stop the boy before he strikes again.

Once again, Ford tackles another of California’s more potent fears, this time earthquakes. For anyone who has been through an earthquake of 6.0 or greater, you’ll be gritting your teeth while reading, because Ford does a great job of describing the chaos, uncertainty and despair of going through such an event. Because this book is, shall we say, over the top, Ford’s earthquakes seem bigger than life, but earthquakes over 8.0 are possible and have in fact occurred, and so everything about the earthquakes in this story rang true. The author claims that he’s never visited Los Angeles himself, but I have to applaud him for getting a lot of details right. The characters traverse the city by bicycle, ATV and on foot and we get to see some familiar landmarks like the Getty Center, downtown LA, Watts Towers, the Santa Monica Pier and many more. My favorite location was Dodger Stadium, where FEMA has set up a rescue operation to offer food and shelter to those displaced by the quake. Ford of course had no idea that Dodger Stadium would end up being used as a COVID-19 testing facility in real life, and I loved that eerie parallel. I also have to mention that Ford throws in a line about last year’s now famous Ridgecrest, CA earthquake, which was a magnitude of 7.1 and caused terrible damage to the residents of the small town. What’s notable about that fact is that I was born in Ridgecrest and my parents still live there. This might be the first time I’ve ever seen “Ridgecrest” in a published novel, and I have to admit I’m pretty thrilled about that!

Random Sh*t is a non-stop thrill ride full of chase scenes, airplane hijinks, assassination attempts and much more. Not to mention there is a psychotic four-year-old—who just happens to be scary smart—gleefully trying to bring California to its knees. Matthew—the little boy—is accompanied by his mother Amber, a weary and terrified young woman who is desperate to protect her child while coming to grips with the fact that he wants to destroy the Western Seaboard. I ended up really liking Amber, who goes through a lot of growth during the story and finally shows some backbone, despite the fact that her own son is manipulating and controlling her.

The downside of so much action is that the author is always trying to top himself, and the action sequences tend to get more unbelievable as the story goes along. There are also quite a few outrageous coincidences that made me roll my eyes, but because this is speculative fiction, and because I was having so much fun, I didn't mind too much. 

While the action and coincidences may seem unbelievable and over the top, Jackson Ford’s characters and humor were spot on. I laughed out loud a lot while reading this book, and that’s pretty rare for me, I have to say. Teagan isn’t always the most pleasant person to be around—she’s dealing with several relationship issues in this story and they’re a bit tedious at times—but damn she’s funny! Some of my favorite scenes were the ones where Teagan, Annie, Africa and Reggie are bickering about one thing or another, and when Jonas Schmidt makes an appearance, there’s even more funny dialog when Teagan gets caught in the act of breaking into his safe. 

I did have a few issues with the book, however. Just like The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With her Mind, I spotted quite a few British spellings and terms in the ARC I read, although I suppose it’s possible those will be scrubbed in the final book. I have nothing against the British, mind you, but when the characters are Americans living in Los Angeles—my city—I get very picky about the details. We don’t say “Cali” for California, and we don’t say “move state” when we’re thinking about moving to another state. There was also a smattering of British spellings like “favourite” and “tyre” I’m pretty sure, which were mightily distracting alongside Ford’s excellent physical descriptions of Los Angeles. It might be petty and stupid, but hey, it’s something that bugged me and I wanted to mention it.

Ford wrangles a pretty big cast of characters, and he doesn’t spend enough time with all of them, unfortunately. Some only appear briefly, and the reader is left with lots of questions. One new character that I absolutely loved—Jonas Schmidt—is only given a few brief scenes, which was disappointing, since Ford gives the reader the impression that Schmidt is going to be an important part of the story. We do get a hint that he might be back in the next book, but I’m not going to hold my breath. The last chapter is a big teaser/lead-in to the sequel, where we meet several new characters who not only had an impact on Teagan’s past, but will probably be central to the plot of book three. If Ford was trying to drive his readers crazy by leaving us hanging at the end, then I have to say he succeeded!

But as far as sheer enjoyment goes, this book succeeds spectacularly, and that’s exactly what I needed this past week. Teagan and her motley but lovable crew of misfits are one of my favorite found families in current fiction, and I’ll be waiting impatiently for the next book in the series, Eye of the Sh*t Storm.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.

Despite Orbit putting it directly in the email I was sent, I didn't realize this was book two in a series. Thankfully, in the end, it didn't matter. It feels like it was deliberately written so you can just waltz into book two and understand what's going on. That said, there are a ton of spoilers for book one, including major plot points, character deaths, and other things that might ruin your enjoyment if you intend on reading the first one. I personally don't give a shit about spoilers, so all it did was intrigue me about perhaps going backward and reading The Girl Who Can Move Sh*t With Her Mind. 

This is a story about a woman living in LA who happens to have psychokinetic powers, works for a secret government agency, and has to try and save the world.  

Teagan is able to move inorganic matter with her mind like metal and plastic, but she has no grip on organic things like trees or the earth. It turns out there's a four-year-old kid who is her opposite, he can move organic shit with his mind. He's also cruel and psychotic. That sounds strange to say about a toddler, but he definitely is one of the least likable POVs I've read in a long time. He enjoys watching people hurt, he wants to hear them scream and cry. He likes burying people and killing them via suffocation, he pummels dirt into people's mouths choking them to death. He's evil. He has no attachment to his mother, he uses and abuses her to get what he wants. He sets off earthquakes on purpose just to watch the world burn. He's also a super-genius, he's not a regular four-year-old which made him even less relatable and unsympathetic as a character. 

It's up to Teagan and her team to find this kid before he sets off an earthquake that could be "The Big One" and cause untold destruction all across California, Oregon, and Washington. 

I had a hard time liking Teagan, she wasn't a bad person but she's definitely self-centered and a little rough around the edges. I would absolutely love doing all the things that the people around her suggested she do - go up in space and mess around with probes and space station stuff. Help people after natural disasters by finding those buried under rubble. There are lots of ways Teagan could help out humanity, but what she wants to do is cook good food. She wants to be a professional chef and doesn't have much interest at all with using her powers in any paradigm-shifting way. The thing of it is, if the government had it their way, Teagan would be locked away and subjected to intense, involuntary experimentation. The one thing standing in the way of that is the little group she works for keeping her busy helping out the government take down bad guys. Without their protection, she would have to go on the run. This little group that's protecting her needs her undivided attention to bring down the bad guys, so opening up a cafe is out of the question for Teagan, and she's a little bitter about it all. 

This is a very light and breezy book, I got through it almost in a day, and if I wasn't so busy it would have been a read-in-one-sitting kind of book. I'm not sure how well some of these jokes and references will age. There are references to things like the last season of Game of Thrones and how everyone hates it, current tv shows and music, and also mentions Donald Trump. I don't tend to enjoy references when there are too many of them, but that's a personal taste kind of thing. This has a readability quality to it that makes it super accessible. It doesn't require learning about a whole fantasy culture's government, or religion, or magic systems. The magic system here is familiar, as is the world. You can fall right into it and plow through until the end. 

This won't be for people who don't like crude jokes, language, or references, either. Honestly, some of this felt like it was just said for the shock value. One of the characters threatened to blackmail another character with the fact he was watching bukkake porn in the cafeteria. It just felt a little shoehorned in made to raise the eyebrows of the reader. In this scenario the world was tearing itself apart, there are hundreds of thousands dead after an earthquake, the survivors are all scrabbling to try and make sense of what happened... who cares that some dude was watching porn and where? I'm not offended, it just felt like things like that were too random to make sense and it didn't strike me as compelling blackmail material. 

This was a fast-paced, action-packed, crude, wild ride of urban fantasy adventure. I think this could have a lot of appeal to the right audience, but I'm not sure if I was the target audience or not. On paper, it sounds like it would work well for me, but I think the fact that I never warmed up to Teagan made this difficult for me to enjoy fully. This was a well-written book that just wasn't for me. 

Ratings: 
Plot: 12/15
Characters: 13/15
World Building: 12/15
Writing: 13/15
Pacing: 13/15
Originality: 11/15
Personal Enjoyment: 6/10
Final Score: 80/100 or 4/5 stars on Goodreads.

Seven percent of the way through the book, I thought to myself, "Daaamn, that's what you're supposed to do at the END of the book, not the beginning!" And the book just kept getting even more crazy from there.

I was not expecting this level of buildup on this series. I was expecting it to stay fun and action packed, but mostly focus on the problems related to just the main character, Teagan. No. No, that isn't what happened. Earthquakes happened. Large earthquakes. Powerful earthquakes.

Which is the entire premise of Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air. A four year old super genius with the the ability to move and manipulate the earth has found out that he can cause earthquakes by tapping into the energy trapped within Earth at fault lines. And he couldn't have picked a worse place to find this out: in the middle of the Los Angeles metro area.

There is a lot of disaster relief. A lot of tragedy. And a lot of trying to keep their head together. Natural disasters are hard on people at the best of times and this is not the best of times. Plus all that entails going after a four year old, mentally and emotionally.

I liked a few things about Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air. I liked some of the new characters. I think they'll add something to this series that was missing up until this point. I liked the idea of an evil child genius. And I actually liked the multiple perspectives. I think it largely worked.

It is just that I struggled to get into this book, every step of the way. I had a lot of trouble reconciling some of the plot with what I know. I just struggled with the entire premise. I just have a difficult time believing that events would play out this way. Also, I don't particularly care for disaster movies, books, tv shows, etc. It is not a genre I gravitate to. Like I said earlier in the review, I didn't expect this series to go in this direction.

The direction I did expect it to go into, the parts where it focused on the trials of Teagan becoming something less of a being owned by the government and her own person? That is in here. Yet...I also didn't like the way that was handled either. It made me feel a little gross. And some of that I was meant to feel, but...I don't think some of it was. And there was also some more about Teagan's powers, and others like her. And there was a lot of growth for the series in all directions.

And I think a lot of my problems with this could be summed up by the fact that we the reader don't even know what magnitude the earthquake is until the very end of the book. Which would be all anyone would be talking about in real life. It would be the first thing any two people meeting for the first time would talk about.

I really wanted to like this. I enjoyed the hell out of The Girl Who Could Move Sh*t With Her Mind. I enjoyed the series that was set up in that book. I'm just not certain I got that promised series with this book. I'm willing to give it another shot, but I ended up disappointed with book two. I'm left confused about what Jackson Ford is trying to set up and do, because it feels like there was one plan and now there is another one.

ARC received from the publisher. This did not affect my review.