I know I lost some major reviewer credit when I admitted my love for Texan cowboy romances, and now that I’m about to admit my soft spot for fire-fighters, no doubt I’m about to drop a little further in your estimation. But admit it, who doesn’t love a fire-fighter? (Er, and if my fiance is reading this, I find the rounded paunch and pasty skin of a software programmer very sexy, too).
Rowan Tripp is a smoke jumper, which means she spends her days leaping from planes and battling bushfires, and her nights recovering from the trauma by drinking a heck of a lot of tequila (as an aside, I’m always amazed by anyone who has the stomach for tequila past the age of about 20). Ro’s tough, sexy, and fearless–but perhaps not quite as fearless as she was last season, before her jumping partner pulled the wrong toggle on his parachute and burned up.
Ordinarily Ro’s attitude would be something along the lines of, unable to stand the heat? Outta the fire. But she’s haunted by the event, her dreams full of (prophetic) nightmares, and her fire-jumping mojo a bit shaken. And when tough-talkin’, good-lookin’, arcade-ownin’ (erm…) Gulliver Curry (okay, the fiance laughed aloud at that name, and rightly so) arrives on the scene, she’s thrown for sure. Ro doesn’t date guys on the team, ever.
Ro’s romantic troubles aren’t the only issues she’s facing, though. Someone’s out to take down her team, and subtlety certainly isn’t part of their vocabulary–we’re talking pig’s blood, drive-by shootings and parachute slashings here. And to top things off, Ro’s bachelor dad has gone and found himself a girlfriend. No wonder Ro’s having trouble sleeping.
I suspect that Chasing Fire is the kind of novel that will divide readers. Those after a novel that’s heavy on the romance may find the smoke-jumping side of things tiresome and drawn out, while those after a novel that’s heavy on the action may find themselves spinning their wheels a little as Gull and Ro participate in the dance of abstinence versus hedonic hell-yeah!, which is a dance that to be honest takes up quite a bit of page space without really going anywhere. (But, then, goodness, there’s a marriage proposal? You what?) The mystery, too, is a little on the weaker side, with the murder easily picked within the first couple of pages of the novel, meaning that the reader has to mentally scream “look behind you!” for four hundred pages.
Roberts’s laconic style is no doubt something that will have its lovers and its haters (I suspect Nalini Singh may have been a tad inspired by Nora), but the dialogue does become challenging at times. It’s not that it’s not engaging–Robert is all about quips, one-liners and snark–but that each character’s voice gradually merges into the white noise of snarky saminess. In the case of Ro and Gull, however, these character similarities aren’t limited just to the dialogue, and the two are essentially clones of each other but with different genitalia.
Other than the fact that Gull is a millionaire from owning a gaming arcade (sorry, had to throw that in again), oh, and that he mentions Ethan Frome in passing in conversation, he and Ro are just as tough, blokey, and endlessly horny as each other (really, sex in the middle of a bushfire after 18 hours on the clock? Either I’m getting old, or that’s entirely unfathomable) . The progression of their relationship didn’t quite work for me, either, particularly as we’re told flat-out at the beginning of the novel that Ro doesn’t date other smoke-jumpers, and as a result the final scene felt horribly rushed.
Personal distate for smart-mouthed, tequila-shooting, alpha-inclined main characters aside, though, I enjoyed Chasing Fire. Yes, both the mystery and romance elements are roughly as tidy as Ro after two (two!) bottles of tequila, but the intriguing setting and the secondary characters–particularly Ro’s dad and his new girlfriend Ella–kept me quite happily turning the pages.
Rating: 
(very good)
Purchase Chasing Fire from Amazon | Book Depository UK | Book Depository USA | Booktopia
With thanks to Hachette Australia for the review copy.
Your turn: fire-fighters or cowboys? Discuss.
Other books by Nora Roberts:
Oh definitely fire-fighters!!! But then again, cowboys don’t offend me either
Anyhoo, great review, as always. I haven’t read any of her books before but I do have The Search at home. Have you read that one yet?
@The Book Whisperer Perhaps I should have made “and” an option instead of just “or”!
This was my first Nora Roberts, so I can’t say I’ve read The Search. I’d definitely be open to trying more of her work, though.
Loved your aside to your fiance. Hopefully, he’s probably too engrossed in his work to keep up with your blog. For love among computer programmers, though, try The Bug by Ellen Ullman.
@Laurie C Thanks for visiting, Laurie! I’ve never heard of The Bug before (I don’t suppose that IT romances are huge bestsellers), but I’ll give it a try.