Grade: B-

Dear Bam,

Am I a glutton for punishment? Some might definitely say so. Others might say I’m only an amateur since I’ve never subjected myself to LKH’s Anita Blake. But hey, I read every Sherrilyn Kenyon Dark-Hunter book except for the last two or three (I stopped keeping count). Why? Ummm… because I like to poke myself in the eye with a fork. I also realized that J. R. Ward did the whole alpha vampire-series with sex way better. But for some reason, when a series starts off right, I keep trying the next one… and the next one, always thinking that the author will find the brilliance, the plot turn, the characterization that grabbed me in the first place. Well, Anne Stuart is back! I can’t say that she’s back with all of the strength that drew me to Bastien in Black Ice, but this book was significantly more enjoyable than Cold As Ice.

The plot has not changed significantly from either of the previous books, which is probably why I’ve heard a lot of grumbling about boredom (*AHEM*, I’m talking to you, Bam) with this installment. Simply speaking, the heroine gets tangled up with unsavory types that are out to destroy/take over the world (and this is where Robert Wagner starts exasperatedly whining in my head And you like an idiot wanted to take over the world. But you don’t realize there is no world anymore; it’s all corporations.), the hero shows up with ambiguous intent: will he kill the heroine or save her? A giant chase ensues and the H/H must either hug it out or duke it out (sometimes a bit of both), while attempting to save the world (or is it corporations?). What made this enjoyable for me were the characterizations and the (eventual) location. Never say I didn’t tell you I’m a Nipponophile.

Once again The Committee is attempting to stop a lunatic from destroying the world. Their target is the Shirosama (”White Lord” in Japanese), head of a cult called the True Realization Fellowship, who believes that to achieve a higher plane of consciousness, he must “cleanse” the world. And this cleansing will happen through a series of terrorist attacks. Yep, this guy is totally wacko, and that’s the clinical term for it. The book neatly discusses the Aum Shinrikyo attack on Tokyo’s subway system without bringing it out of context, making the Shirosama’s goal all the more realistic. The portrayal of the Shirosama is also striking. His insanity and his really scary belief that he’s doing the right thing for humanity by wiping it out rings true and he doesn’t come of as a caricature of a nut job (see the prior installment of the Ice series. I never could think of Harry as anything other than a joke). The Shirosama is after an blue ceramic urn that is owned by Summer Hawthorne. Summer is the curator of The Sansone, a Los Angeles museum that specializes in Asian art. She has come into possession of the infamous urn through her Japanese nanny Hana Hayashi. Summer’s mother (think LA loony type - sorry all you Angelinos, I can’t help myself - who is constantly looking for a guru to give her purpose) has promised the urn to the Shirosama even though she had no right to do so. Of course, Summer has a totally fucked up relationship with her mother and doesn’t want the Shirosama to get his paws on it.

Summer decides that the best course of action is to put the urn on display at the Sansone and it premiers at an evening exhibit. All the players show up at the exhibit, and on her way out after locking up for the night (don’t these people have night guards and security cameras?) Summer is stuffed into the trunk of a limo by two of the Shirosama’s disciples. She is saved by Takashi O’Brien, the half-Japanese, half-Irish Committee operative charged with keeping the urn out of the Shirosama’s possession. The Committee believes in saving the world by any means, and apparently Taka has been told to dispose of Summer after the urn has been obtained. However, Taka is quickly notified that the Shirosama is after the location of a secret temple as well as the urn, and apparently Summer has both.

Summer engages in the old “can I trust him” debate. What makes it interesting this time around is that Summer isn’t a doormat. She has taken precautions against the Shirosama and soon realizes that while she doesn’t really trust Taka, she knows it’s either him or certain death ’cause she doesn’t trust the Shirosama at all. Taka, on the other hand, knows that Summer wants nothing to do with the True Realization Fellowship and while he briefly questions Summer’s composure in the face of so many attempts on her life, he knows that when push comes to shove, she’s only a pawn. Taka feels that he has to get underneath Summer’s relatively unruffled exterior to get her to trust him, and uses every means he can think of to do that. Unfortunately for Taka (and luckily for us), by cracking Summer’s facade, he unintentionally loses his objectivity for the first time evah.

Some of the things that bothered me include Summer’s predictable solitary life: she’s got the uncaring mother, the uninvolved stepfather, the gay black friend, and the younger half sister that she LOOOOOOOOOVES! Summer is totally oblivious about the urn. Why didn’t Summer know and/or search for the origins of the urn? She’s a FUCKING ASIAN ARTS EXPERT! Wouldn’t something as beautiful as the urn pique her curiosity? Lastly, and this isn’t a character flaw but either something I missed or Ms. Stuart glossed over, apparently something happened to Summer when she was young and it’s affected her ability to connect sexually (and socially) with men. We’re never really told what happened and it’s alluded to in only the vaguest of terms.

Taka is pretty wooden for me until the second half of the book. He finally starts becoming more than a hot Bastien/Peter reprise when he realizes that not only does he need to get Summer to lean on him, but he does something about it. Once the action moves out of the LA area, we finally get a glimpse into Taka’s life, his family’s expectations, his feelings about The Committee and the life he has chosen. Prior to this there are oblique references to Taka being the “black sheep”, but of what isn’t explained until the latter half of the book. When the reveal starts, well, I was left wishing it had begun sooner because it seemed like there was so much left unexplored. This was the part of the book that really picked up for me, rather than the running, the car chases and the repeated kidnapping attempts that begin to feel extremely repetitive and unexciting.

I wish I had gone straight from Black Ice to Ice Blue. I think the book would have been even more enjoyable. However, considering how much I hated Genny (or was it Ginny? All I know is she fell into the TSTL category for me), it’s a miracle I picked this book up at all, let alone actually liked it. This one gets a B- for me.

Love,
Shuzluva

Buy this book here.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 9:07 am and is filed under Books, Grade: B, Romance: Suspense, Shuzluva's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.