Fire and Ice (Ice, Bk 5)
Author:
Genres: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Romance
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
Author:
Genres: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Romance
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
Helpful Score: 3
I found this to be the weakest entry in the "Ice" series. Reno - the hero and undercover agent, is supposedly adept at moving about unnoticed: He has his waist length hair died crimson, has three red tears tattood on his face (no explanation for this), wears tight leather pants and jackets, and loud high heeled, pointy toed boots. He is supposedly notoriously well-known for his appearance in his home country of Japan, but is unrecognizable everywhere else, despite not having changed his appearance or manner of dress in the 2 years he's been in exile. Hmmm....
Our heroine Jilly is just 20 years old, uber-smart, but living at home with mom & dad, while going to college, and a virgin. Her entire reason for travelling to Japan is to cry on her sister's shoulder after a mildly botched first sexual experience, a premise so thin it's almost transparent. And of course the book includes **SPOILER ALERT** one of those overdone scenes where they're going to be killed by the bad guys any minute now, so instead of plotting escape, they have sex.
Implausible as all of this is, the author then admits that her entire plot involving the yakuza involves a lot of "poetic license" since the yakuza doesn't actually work the way she portrays them in the book. In fact, the yakuza "godfather" in the book operates exactly like media depictions of the Mafia in New York.
I really enjoyed the previous "Ice" books, but Stuart could have done a better job with this one. Would it have been so hard to make the plot fit the reality of yakuza in Japan? To have the characters grow up a little more from the previous books?
Our heroine Jilly is just 20 years old, uber-smart, but living at home with mom & dad, while going to college, and a virgin. Her entire reason for travelling to Japan is to cry on her sister's shoulder after a mildly botched first sexual experience, a premise so thin it's almost transparent. And of course the book includes **SPOILER ALERT** one of those overdone scenes where they're going to be killed by the bad guys any minute now, so instead of plotting escape, they have sex.
Implausible as all of this is, the author then admits that her entire plot involving the yakuza involves a lot of "poetic license" since the yakuza doesn't actually work the way she portrays them in the book. In fact, the yakuza "godfather" in the book operates exactly like media depictions of the Mafia in New York.
I really enjoyed the previous "Ice" books, but Stuart could have done a better job with this one. Would it have been so hard to make the plot fit the reality of yakuza in Japan? To have the characters grow up a little more from the previous books?
