7 May 2011

New Books


This will be my fourth entry for Naida's Romance Reading Challenge.

Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts is another one of her gems.  I say this because her books are  mostly polished -the characters real and multi dimensional, the plot flawless and the background very well researched. This book, like most of her other books has a well researched background on the careers of her characters - this time the book is about fire jumpers. Fire jumpers are just like fire fighters except that their work involves jumping into the heart of the fire and killing it from the inside. It is serious, dangerous work and her two main characters - Rowan Tripp and Gulliver Curry seem to enjoy the hard dangerous job.


Like in all of her books, Roberts fills Chasing Fire with details that really brings the story's world to life. She shows how smoke jumping is a high stress, physical career where one mistake can mean death. Smoke jumpers have to carry everything they need when they head into a blaze: food, drink, equipment for putting out the fire, sleeping bags and they cannot go home until the fire is out. This can mean days or even weeks of digging, spraying, clearing bush and sometimes running from certain death. The isolation of the areas where they fight fires means that if a smoke jumper, or a team of smoke jumpers, gets stuck, they are often too far away to receive outside help. Roberts really makes the smoke jumpers' experiences multi-dimensional with firefighting lingo and such vivid scenes that readers will be able to feel the heat on their faces and smell burnt trees.

Like many of Roberts' heroines, Rowan Tripp is gutsy, hot-tempered, fiercely loyal and can drink like a man. In fact she behaves almost like a man, except for the fact that she loves perfumes, especially one that smells of peaches. Gulliver or Gull on the other hand is more romantic, is easy going and flexible, kisses well and is smart and respectful. In fact the perfect hero. And to add to all this macho image, he loves to read and is rich as well. Who wouldn't fall in love with such a hero? Well, Rowan for one didn't, or refused to. Brought up by a bachelor father (her mother ran away and later died), Rowan has few feminine traits and has a lot of relationship issues.

He's the type of man who can tell a woman he loves her in spite of her not giving an inch:"I care about you, Rowan. The you who's got a laugh like an Old West saloon girl, the you who picks out constellations in the night sky and smells like peaches. I care about that woman as much as I do the fearless, smart, tireless one who puts her life on the line every time the siren goes off." (sigh...)

The two however find that they are fast falling in love, although Rowan refuses to admit it. However when the crazy lady who is running around vandalizing the smoke jumper's equipment targets Rowan, Gulliver's laid-back attitude is finally shaken off and his protective inner self is revealed. Mean while there are two burnt bodies found in the forest fires and because of her altercation with the "crazy lady who had vandalised her room" Rowan becomes a suspect. There is plenty of action in this, novel, not less the romance, sexy action type. You get nose to nose with the forest fires - the details are amazingly real and indepth and if you still can't fall in love with Roberts, then you are a hardcore anti romance type.

Like all her books, this one is a keeper - you want it for yourself! I'd give it a 5!

This is not part of the review though I definitely want to say something about this particular writer. I've always enjoyed her books though I mostly loved her series - the Quinn Brothers, the Born In series, even her tryout of a fantasy cum vampire novel series starting with Valey of Silence and Dance of the Gods.However my absolute favourite is the Quinn Brothers series. Here she portrays 4 men - strong, responsible, charming. And their women are all strong women but not domineering. All with different careers - one is a cleaning lady - but her women are all very real and very down to earth.

3 comments:

The Bookworm said...

You're doing great with the reading challenge Kat!
I do enjoy Nora Roberts books and agree, her characters feel real. I had never heard of smoke jumpers before. You've inspired me to pick one of her books up again soon.
I enjoyed her Garden Trilogy a while ago. There's also a stand alone book she wrote called Midnight Bayou which was very good too.

Happy Mother's Day!!

DIGITAL WORLD PAGES ARCHIVE said...

Beautiful introduction!

Gattina said...

I love to read books from Nora Roberts they are also translated into French or German, so I have the choice because it's rather hard to get English books here in Brussels.