Don’t I know it. Inner nerd rant too, when I friend told me about this I almost didn’t believe her description of the character. But apparently there’s a page in the book that actually credits it, if I remember correctly. Dunno how she got it through though, ha.

You know, I'm noticing with this book how much use Stuart makes of showers, baths, pools, and hot tubs in her books.

LOL. I think water can be really sexy so I like her use of it. There is a great pool scene in one of her old categories, a book called Rafe’s Revenge.

As for Isobel, I guess I didn't see Isobel as any less competent than any of the rest of the Committee, except for Bastien (wasn't he the only one who knew who Killian *really* was?), who as far as I'm concerned was the only real bad ass among them, outside of Taka *at the beginning* of Ice Blue.

I agree that Sebastien was the most competent and ruthelss, and Taka at the beginning of Ice Blue second most. But I think even Peter and Reno are far, far more competent and ruthless than Isobel.

For one thing, they all killed without compunction, whereas Isobel couldn’t kill without being shaken by it.

For another, they all, except possibly Reno, used sex as part of their job. Isobel could not seem to have decent sex even in her private life (except with Serafin) much less in her professional life. Peter even cheated on his wife had sex with men as part of his job, despite the fact that he was heterosexual. Do you think Isobel ever had sex with a woman?

How are we supposed to believe that she was a Committe operative under Harry Thomason, who ordered Bastien to kill innocent bystanders and Peter to have sex with men while he was married?

I enjoyed Ice Storm for the dialogue, the tension, the lean description, and the side characters but the double standard in the way Isobel was portrayed makes it probably my least favorite book in this series.

What cracked me up a little bit was the thought Reno has at the beginning of Fire and Ice that the Committee are “do gooders,” because it seemed like all the moral ambiguity was gone, and the Committee completed its transformation into some version of the Fantastic Four, but with no interesting super powers.

LOL! Too true. I loved the moral darkness of the Committe in Black Ice and I would have loved it had it stayed that murky.

I really liked Stuart's contemporaries for Onyx years back. The heroes were over the top alpha, the heroines were emotionally damaged but she gave enough information to allow the reader to understand why the characters were as screwed up as they were.

If you are referring to Nightfall, Moonrise and Ritual Sins, I liked the dark energy those books had, and I found them compulsively readable, but on the level of romance, they did not work as well for me as her more recent books do, because in Nightfall, Moonrise, and Ritual Sins, the heroes were so morally twisted that I had trouble understanding why the heroines, no matter how emotionally damaged, would choose spend any time in their company.

In the Ice books, I can see that better. The heroes seem more vulnerable, and they often save the heroines’ lives or protect them, so the heroines’ choices are more understandable.

I tried the first book in this series though- Black Ice (?) and kept flashing back on romantic suspense from the 70's and 60's. American girl working in a office in France who gets emotionally blackmailed into taking a “friend's” place in a job in a remote sinister chateau where she meets morally ambiguous characters including a threatening man that she finds herself attracted to despite her fears and a seemingly nice guy- well it was a gothic cliche that the nice guy was never the hero. I quit reading at the point that the heroine was asleep (drugged?) and the hero is checking her out physically.

To me at that point her heroine- unlike previous heroines who were (as I said)emotionally damaged but still proactive- reached a state of passiveness that left me uninterested in the woman's future or the conclusion of the book.

I was pretty frustrated with Black Ice at that point in the book too, but I persisted in reading it because I had read a spoiler about a plot turn that really intrigued me. And I am so glad I did, because it ended up being a keeper for me — I have read that book at least six or seven times now. It’s by far my favorite of all the Stuart books I have tried.

Are you sure you liked Cold as Ice (Peter and Genevieve's book) better than I did? I gave it a B+. Or are you thinking of the last book, Ice Storm, with Isobel and Serafin?

Oh, yeah, that’s right. Under the best of circumstances I can’t remember the names, but I’m trying to finish up a huge work project this weekend, and am even more brain dead than usual.

You know, I’m noticing with this book how much use Stuart makes of showers, baths, pools, and hot tubs in her books.

As for Isobel, I guess I didn’t see Isobel as any less competent than any of the rest of the Committee, except for Bastien (wasn’t he the only one who knew who Killian *really* was?), who as far as I’m concerned was the only real bad ass among them, outside of Taka *at the beginning* of Ice Blue. What cracked me up a little bit was the thought Reno has at the beginning of Fire and Ice that the Committee are “do gooders,” because it seemed like all the moral ambiguity was gone, and the Committee completed its transformation into some version of the Fantastic Four, but with no interesting super powers.

I tried the first book in this series though– Black Ice (?) and kept flashing back on romantic suspense from the 70′s and 60′s. American girl working in a office in France who gets emotionally blackmailed into taking a “friend’s” place in a job in a remote sinister chateau where she meets morally ambiguous characters including a threatening man that she finds herself attracted to despite her fears and a seemingly nice guy– well it was a gothic cliche that the nice guy was never the hero. I quit reading at the point that the heroine was asleep (drugged?) and the hero is checking her out physically.

To me at that point her heroine– unlike previous heroines who were (as I said)emotionally damaged but still proactive– reached a state of passiveness that left me uninterested in the woman’s future or the conclusion of the book.

As far as Stuart’s failure to make her hero in this book more ethnic Japanese– check out her Australian journalist hero in The Widow, who aside from an occasional vaguely Australian phrase, I think he called his mother “me old mum”, had the speech patterns of the US Midwest.

Even though I didn’t love Jilly, at least her portrayal was consistent. Though I enjoyed Ice Storm, it bothered me that Isobel was said to be the coldly compentent and ruthless head of an intelligence organization, when in reality she turned out to be anything but competent or ruthless, and I could not imagine her running the Committee or being a successful operative for all those years. In Jilly’s case, for the most part her actions fit her character’s background, except for the brilliant part.

In any case, Fire and Ice didn’t feel like Ice Blue redux to me for a few reasons, some having to do with spoilers, but a lot of it because Reno didn’t seem like anywhere near as much of a badass as Taka. Whereas Taka was trying to kill Summer half the time, Reno mostly wanted to protect Jilly, even if he did go about it in a mixed up way.

Robin

flip

I agree that it would have been nice to hear more about how and why Reno had become who he was (to the degree that he was), but I was actually glad that he wasn’t as ruthless as some of the other Ice heroes, both because Jilly was so innocent and young, and because there has already been a lot of ruthlessness in this series.

Secondly, I thought Reno’s treatment of Jilly was lame for such a bad boy. Especially since in prior novels, Stuart gave us tantalizing glimpses of just how bad Reno is. Remember in Blue Ice, Summer (Jilly’s sister) is shocked by his bondage pornography. In this novel, there is a theme of how Jilly wants to surrender or submit to Reno, yet Stuart doesn’t really explore the bondage and submission.

Honestly, it would have been much more intense and believable than the I am being mean to you for your own good theme in this novel.

As for the clothes, I feel that Stuart had a very good explanation in Jilly’s height. IIRC, Reno told Jilly that because she was so tall, his friend had trouble finding clothing that would fit her, and had to get a cross-dresser’s outfit. That actually made a lot of sense to me, because from what I’ve heard from an American who lives there, it really is difficult for tall Americans to find clothes in their sizes in Japan.

I do agree with you though that Stuart highlighted some of the aspects of contemporary Japan that fascinate westerners, but I thought that this fit the heightened tone of the Ice books. Still, by the end of the book, part of me was longing for a quieter portrait of the country, something like Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen.