The Flash: Climate Changeling

by Richard A. Knaak

One of the Flash's deadliest foes—the Weather Wizard—returns to kill Joe West and the Scarlet Speedster. Will he unleash a far greater evil?
Months ago, just as he was about to kill the Flash, Clyde Mardon was shot dead by Joe West, Barry Allen’s stepfather and a detective on the Central City police force. Now an inmate in the Iron Heights prison, Mark Mardon—the Weather Wizard—is haunted by the ghost of his dead brother. Escaping Iron Heights in the midst of an unnatural thunderstorm, Mark is pressed by the spectre to become stronger and stronger, until he wields enough power to destroy the entire city. While his main focus is revenge on Detective Joe West and the Flash, he also believes he can use his power to bring Clyde back from the dead. But the Weather Wizard may not be the greatest threat Team Flash faces. For the storm has an explicable effect on Caitlin Snow, as well, threatening to let loose Killer Frost.
THE FLASH and all related characters and elements © & TM DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. DC LOGO : TM & © DC Comics. WB TM & © WBEI. (s17)

Genres: Dc Comics, Superheroes

433 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 28, 2018

About the author

Richard A. Knaak is the bestselling author of Dragonlance novels, the Dragonrealm and Black City Saint series (his own creations), six novels for Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo series, and six works in the Warcraft universe. He has also written several non-series fantasy books.

Reviews

[Jim C · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a book that is based on the television show and takes place during the third season. In this one, the Weather Wizard escapes and is even more powerful than before. The Flash and the rest of his team are on the case.

I am so surprised that I am giving a book by this author such a low rating. I have read many of his books that he contributed to the Dragonlance universe and I enjoyed them all. Unfortunately, he was in a different universe and it shows. This was bad on a couple of levels. I am not expecting great literature when reading a media tie-in book but I do expect the characters to be portrayed correctly. That was not the case here. Every character felt off. Iris with her constant complaining about Joe and Barry, Cisco just felt off, and I am still confused what this author did with H.R.'s character. As for the story I just didn't care as it was just flat. There was an attempt at depth for the story but it did not land. The only redeeming part of this book was the finale where Flash uses a personal experience to connect and end the battle. This felt like the show.

I know this book is suppose to be part of the CW Arrowverse. I am here to say it isn't as I never felt the actual characters from the show were on display in this book. I cannot say for sure if the author has watched the entire show or just several episodes for his research. Unfortunately I suspect the latter and I did not fell like I was reading a media tie-in book of a show that I enjoy.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is going to be my first DNF review. I don't think there are very many books in my 20+ years of reading that I haven't powered through, even if they're not particularly good, but this one took the cake. I was a bit apprehensive about reviewing a book I hadn't finished, but I think having read over half of it gives me enough rope to say why I didn't want to finish it - it's like a TV program; if you haven't hooked me in the first few episodes, or at least intrigued me, I'm not going to watch the rest and I can probably tell you why.

This book is bland. In 200+ pages, it was the same set pieces over and over again; Barry fights Weather Wizard, Wizard wins. Barry argues with Iris (who reads wildly out of character). Repeat previous two scenes, possibly with some Caitlin-might-turn-into-Killer-Frost added in somewhere, which was the most interesting subplot but again kept going around in circles. Granted, some episodes of the show are like this - but at least the confrontations between Barry and the villain teach him something new so that he can win next time. This is just torture porn of Barry bashing his head against a brick wall.

The dialogue is all over the place as well. The characters alternatively talk like they've eaten the dictionary, or like they're concussed. It's not difficult to watch a few episodes of the show and see who speaks in contractions, who's most likely to spout technobabble, and who's going to sit and drink coffee and say silly things (Hi HR). When you find yourself mentally correcting the dialogue in your head so that it reads better, not only does it take twice as long to read anything, but it makes you wonder why you're not writing the book yourself.

I hate giving scathing reviews, especially of prose, because I know how hard it is to write something like this. But I did not get any enjoyment out of reading the half of the book that I read, and I'd advise people who like the Flash to stay far away from this. There are far better tie-in novels out there.

[Khurram · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was extremely dissapointed with thus book. in fact this book reminded me why I stopped watching this TV series. For a book about the fastest superhero alive you will be hard pressed to find a slower more repetitive book.

Central City is in the midst of a super storm. However is empowering the Weather Wizard to escape or is it a manifestation of his power. Mark Mardon will do anything to bring his younger brother back from the dead. Punishing Detective Joe West, the Flash and the whole of Central City along the way. Can team Flash put work together to stop the new supercharged Weather Wizard?

The best thing I can say about this book is it works great as a bedtime story the kids will definitely be asleep after a chapter. The story moves at a snails pace. It is repetitive and predictable. If it was an story arc on the show I would be shouting at the TV characters how they could not have seen this coming a mile away. Read the Flash comics they are so much better.

[Joel Flank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Climate Changeling is an original adventure for the TV series The Flash, and involves the return of one of the Flash's enemies, the Weather Wizard. So far, so good for an entertaining read. Unfortunately, there's a few things which make this book less than enjoyable. First, there's the problem of the personalities of most of the characters is oddly off. Iris is paranoid about her father and Barry/The Flash's safety, far far more than ever in the show. Cisco comes across as a pretentious know it all who seeks and craves praise rather than a charming nerd, etc.

The other issue with the book is that the plot overall is pretty far fetched, even for the Flash where there's superpowers which can become pretty unrealistic even in a world where every other character has powers. The fact that the Weather Wizard's powers not only increase an order of magnitude over what he's ever shown before, allowing him to control even more powerful weather effects is one thing, but beyond that, he can somehow additionally calculate where the Flash will be when moving at super speed and attack points in front of him with weather, even though the Weather Wizard is essentially a smart, but small time crook with powers, and not some amazing mathematical genius. In addition, he ALSO gets the ability to drain the Flash's speed force to further empower himself, which makes no sense in the world of the Arrowverse, even when accounting for the increase in powers he gets in this book. Because of all of this, the confrontations between the Flash and Weather Wizard seem like a drawn out slog which endlessly repeat. The book could easily have been 300 pages instead of 420, and not lost a single thing.

[Jane Higginson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story somewhat - the weather wizard was a good meta to pick and I liked the concept of the fastest man alive basically having to be faster than thoughts - but there was way too much time spent with the weather wizard.
There was a fair amount of the book where it was just Cisco having to do everything himself which wasn't enjoyable because what the flash tv show portrays in most episodes is a team all working together and this was lacking in this book - the show also has a lot of technical, scientific and medical jargon which i honestly wouldn't want to have to try and include in a book I was writing because I wouldn't know where to start with it but I really felt the abscence of them

[Silverscarf · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a book I was really excited for, as I am for all the tie-ins to the DCTV shows. This book is set in mid season three. It started off well enough, but I was disappointed in the end.

There were a lot of problems I had with this, so here we go.

This book doesn't capture the show very well at all, it feels nothing like it and I didn't make any kind of emotional connection with anything in this story.

None of the characters are themselves. They're very flat and it always seemed that they weren't actually doing much of anything, certainly not nearly as much as they would normally be doing in the show. Their dialogue is somewhat stilted and half the time they talk like they're in the Victorian era instead of present day. And the team dynamics are nonexistent, they're all just basically doing their own thing instead of working together as a team to take down the bad guy.

There's none of the science that I love from the show, we just hear about Cisco looking at “Readings” from the sensors, and no details about what any of the team are actually doing. No techo-babble, no big words, no science at all, and no real explanation of what is really going on or exactly how it's happening.

This is also a very long and repetitive book, 430 pages, well the pages are small so it shouldn't feel so long, but it did. A lot of the scenes are just the same thing over and over. Cisco looking at readings, Barry fighting the Weather Wizard, etc. Every time there's an action scene where the Flash tries to stop Mardon, it's just the same encounter repeating itself, the team and Barry in particular don't try anything else, any change in tactics, the setting of the fight is the only thing that changes.

I was about halfway through when I eventually just started skimming and skipping and finding that I wasn't really missing anything. I rarely do that, but in this case all I wanted was to get it over with and move on to other books.

I mean no disrespect to this author, but his writing style just doesn't mesh very well with the show. I hate to leave this kind of review, but its just how it went with this one.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's my speedy "Flash-style" review of "The Flash: Climate Changeling" from Richard Knaak. This book is incredibly dull and tedious. It took me nearly two months of bus and train rides to get through it. The overall story is thin and the action is repetitive and too much time is devoted to unnecessary subplots. This book weighs in at around 430 pages, yet there's only enough "real" story to sustain about 150 pages or so. If that's all you need to know, good luck to you.

"Climate Changeling" aside from the lame "wow...someone really thought that was a good title" title, is just not very good. This book is a media tie-in with the Flash television show on the CW, and makes that show seem very well-written by comparison. So if you're a fan of the comic books and not the TV show, you may end up lost with all of the "TV character" specific plots and actions.

For fans of the TV show, this novel takes place somewhere in the third season of the "The Flash"--when the "big bad" was Savitar and Wally West had become Kid Flash. Yet it's uncertain where this falls in season 3, as they say Savitar is defeated--yet one of the characters who died defeating Savitar is a living and prominent supporting character in the book. So I'd say it's somewhere in season 3 where they thought they had stopped Savitar and hadn't.

As for the plot of "Climate Changeling," there really isn't too much of one. Weather Wizard breaks out of Iron Heights prison during a big storm. He sees visions of his dead brother Clyde--who had the same weather powers as his brother, but died in the pilot episode of The Flash TV show--who keeps nagging him to be brought back to life. Because the device that was supposed to contain his powers in prison malfunctioned, Weather Wizard ended up FAR more powerful after his incarceration. He not only has the power to control the weather much more than before, he can also drain energy from meta-humans who use even vaguely weather-related powers (including The Flash!). Is Weather Wizard hallucinating his dead brother? Is it a different meta-human manipulating Weather Wizard? Is Weather Wizard really going to resurrect his dead brother? Those questions take way, way, WAY too long to be answered. And if you think in any way like me, the answer won't be very satisfying. Not at all. But while Team Flash keeps fighting Weather Wizard again and again and AGAIN and being unable to defeat him, Central City is being slowly drowned and destroyed by the storms Weather Wizard has unleashed.

What else is wrong with this book? Well, the portrayal of Barry's soulmate, Iris West, is pretty annoying. On the TV show, Iris is a strong, supportive, heroic woman. In this book, she comes of whiny and shrill and co-dependent. The characters feel they have to avoid her because she's always on the warpath about the danger they are putting themselves in. In this book, she's almost a minor villain. And definitely a distraction from the main story. That portrayal of Iris tells more about the author than the character, I feel--and it is a disservice to the character the fans of the show enjoy every week.

Another, more technical, issue is the amount of typos that got through the editing process. In one case, "come on" becomes "come one." And in another case, the word "Barry" has a zero in it. That kind of stuff is irritating and should not be happening.

I don't know if the editors demanded a book of a certain length. In any case, the main unnecessary subplot regards Dr. Caitlin Snow (a.k.a. Killer Frost), a prominent member of Team Flash. There are many pages devoted to her struggle with her cold powers. Those powers she is trying to suppress (and the fairly unfriendly "Killer Frost" personality that goes with them) are thrown all out of whack by the Weather Wizard's rampage. And Cisco Ramon (a.k.a. Vibe) has to split his time between being Team Flash's computer and engineering expert and helping Caitlin control her meta-human self. As the novel goes on, the struggle with her powers takes more and more of Cisco's time and effort. It also takes up a LOT of pages. Mostly, the Killer Frost subplot provides the supporting cast "something else" to do while The Flash and others are confronting Weather Wizard directly (again and again). And any time the focus shifts to Killer Frost trying to emerge, the already slow pace of the story goes positively glacial.

Anyway, you get the idea. "Climate Changeling" is dull and way too long. Yes, there is something fundamentally wrong with a book about The Flash being so slow and tedious. Only a true die-hard fan of The Flash TV show should even attempt to read this.

[row row · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because I loved The Haunting of Barry Allen, I'm deep into my rewatch of the show, and I wanted any tie-in materials and extra content I could get. I think this should've been written by Clay and Susan Griffith who wrote THoBA - their writing was much better and flowed more smoothly, and their book felt like a genuine episode of the Flash (as did the sequel, Arrow: A Generation of Vipers), whereas this was definitely more like silly fanfic.

The writing was stilted and awkward, everyone was out of character and delivering their dialogue like they were stage actors in a play and over-acting for their lives. The plot was clearly (at least to me) a self-indulgent narrative for the author's favorite villain. It dragged a lot, and I skimmed through the last two chapters.

The only reason I finished it at all was because I do love the Flash/Barry as characters, and I liked the idea of getting to read an entirely new story in this world. This takes place midway through the third season of the show, so there was established Westallen, but it was mostly out of character on Iris's part and there was a lack of romance in favor of focusing on a suddenly close friendship between Caitlin and Iris that's never been that developed in the show.

One star for the fact that I love the Flash show, another star for the Westallen crumbs and the few moments when Iris did seem in-character.

[Heena · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really disappointed in this book. I was looking forward to enjoying a superhero story in a different medium, but was let down. The book was slow for being about the Fastest Man Alive. The action was incredibly repetitive and Team Flash makes no significant insights into their investigation for the first 300 pages or so. Instead the exposition is beat down to death: Mark Mardon is trying to revive his brother! Caitlin's bracelet is failing to contain her ice powers! Iris is mad at Joe and Barry for doing their jobs!

Leading to my next point: Iris, admittedly, is not my favorite character on the CW show, but at least she has some character depth and development there. Here, all Iris does is complain that Joe and Barry and Wally are always running into danger. Well duh. Wally may be new to the superhero scene, but she should have accepted this part of Joe and Barry by this point. It seemed like the writer didn't know what else to with Iris, as she adds no other real value to the story.


Overall a very disappointing read, though I'm hoping it because this book wasn't well written versus superheroes not being great for this type of medium.

[Rhys Causon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This almost perfectly captured how it feels to watch a filler episode of The Flash… that is not a compliment.

This book barely keeps my attention and when it does it’s yet another conversation that uses “bro” or “sis” way too much as if the reader has forgotten what the relationships between characters are. I may not have been paying attention to every single word, but if I’m reading that Iris and Wally are having a conversation my knowledge of the show is reminding me of who they are. Same with Mark and Clyde.

It also didn’t help that one of the main conflicts that carried the book was the ever increasingly boring “Iris making a big deal over a situation that should be easy to understand” problem that is what made the show a slog at times.

The second half picked up a little though… though that might be because I pretty much read the whole second half in a day. Funny how a book about a superhero with super speed can have such terrible pacing for the most part.

So for the most part I skimmed this book… and didn’t miss much at all. But I can imagine that not everyone would be as stubborn as me and finish it if they weren’t enjoying it.

[Dave Jorsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like the TV show, Barry tries to do more than what everyone else wants him to do, gets in over his head and apologizes for not listening to them, makes promise to never do that again, gets tech help from Cisco for new approach, warns off others to not get involved because it is too dangerous, gets involved with the bad guy for a final show down, gets help from one or more of his crew against his wishes, then embraces it and teams up, defeats the bad guy, etc. Final encounter took way too long in terms of pages. Took a lot of pages of saying essentially the same thing. Anticlimactic ending. In summary, this is a book version of a TV episode, not a motion picture quality read.

[Parker]

The Flash Climate Changeling introduces again the character The Weather Wizard. He was given powers to control the weather from the particle explosion that also gave the flash his powers. I wanted to read this book because I was so interested in the tv show. It is a longer read, which I usually don't like. But this one is different. The Weather Man spent years in prison reflecting on how Detective Joe and the Flash put him there. When he finally gets out he has one goal to get revenge on the two.

[Christopher Dodds · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed every moment and chapter of this book, the characters were well thought out and kept to the way they are portrayed in the show but obviously changed for the purposes of this particular story which was also great involving some great plot lines and moments of tension. What I also liked was the fact that it was quite clear on which season the book takes place in.

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very disappointing book. I preferred reading Arrow over Flash. I love the tv show but this book was way too long for the chase of one meta-human the weather mean aka Morton who can change the weather. It was fine watching that one or two episodes but basing off two episodes on 426 pages was a waste. They could have included other meta humans to conclude the whole story.

[Barry Urbanek · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was fair, I've read better in the Flash series of books. The beginning didn't hold my interest and I had to push through until the last 100 pages or so before it really picked up and got exciting.

I'm sorry, but this book didn't do anything for me.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

It wasn't the best, but it wasn't the worst book I've ever read either. As a fan of the show I couldn't help, but be disappointed in the characters. They weren't themselves. There is more to the science at Star Labs than reading data streams. It just all seemed to fall flat.