Keeper of the Winds

Prophetically named Jenna Solitaire (purportedly the author, with fictitious ""about the author"" blurb included) was orphaned early, lost her grandmother at age eight and is burying her grandfather, her only remaining relative, as this first-in-a-quartet fantasy adventure opens. Rummaging through her grandparents' possessions in the attic, she finds a wooden board, carved with unreadable symbols, and a planchette in a strange leathery case. Hoping she can use it to communicate Ouija-style with her dead relatives, Jenna moves the disk across the board and awakens a long-slumbering evil force with the power to unleash killer tornadoes on Jenna's small Ohio town. As she is about to learn, Jenna is the latest in a long line of Solitaire women to be ""Keeper"" of the winds. Using her grandmother's journal, she will have to quickly learn to reign in the board's destructive power. Naturally, villains with inscrutable motives want the board, too. While this super-heroine concept has appeal, the plot is ordinary, marred by overwrought prose and an inane set-up. (Who goes rummaging through the attic moments after a funeral? Why was knowledge of the board, the journal and Jenna's lineage left for her to happen upon after everyone in her family had died?) There is, however, a hunky ex-priest who makes Jenna feel electrified and for some readers that may be enough to carry them through to book two, Keeper of the Waters (ISBN 0-765-35359-8). Ages 13-up.