Smoke jumper Reyne Oldre has demons to battle. She’s still haunted by the Oxbow fire that turned deadly for her crew. HER crew. She was in charge, and she feels she failed them. As the crew boss of the Lolo Hotshots, it was her responsibility to keep her crew safe. But dragons have minds of their own, and sometimes they change them- with deadly consequences.
Since that fire two years ago, Rayne has been haunted by it. Two teams and four dead kids sent Rayne from groundpounding to fire science. She was hoping to make a difference- a real difference; but she needed the grant money.
If crew bosses could have hand-held computers, they could read real-time humidity, wind speed, temperature, and even fuel moisture levels. It would let crew bosses have the critical information in the field, instead of waiting for the information to be relayed to them. Rayne knew that those precious minutes and seconds would save lives.
Logan McCabe has other ideas for the coveted grant. He’s seen too many smoke jumpers get stranded in trees and battered as they tried to detangle their chutes. Not only did they get injured from getting caught, but that usually meant a medevac out and a lost team member fighting on the ground.
He’d seen too many good jumpers get tangled in trees, injured, and then sent to the sidelines to recover from their injuries, taking out needed presence and experience on the ground. There had to be a better way to extract them from these situations without injury. He was certain his portable zip line would do the trick.
As it turns out, it’s going to take both of them working together on the project that gets the grant.
Can they work together without killing each other? And, as their relationship develops, can Rayne slay the dragon in her dreams once and for all, that will allow her to take the chance on falling in love with another smoke jumper?
This is the final book (book 6) in the Full Circle Series. I haven’t read any of the other books, but you don’t need to in order to thoroughly enjoy this one. Some characters from the first book (Refuge) make a return appearance, and I would enjoy reading the earlier book although again, it’s not necessary. One thing I really did like, too, was the addition of the novella at the end of this book, Sandcastles, which wraps up the secondary story all up very nicely with a bow.
I give this 5 out of 5 stars, and Lisa Tawn Bergren goes on my absolute favorite author list. You can check out her website here: http://lisatawnbergren.com/books/. I know I’ll be going and digging around to find her other titles.
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.
On a related note: perhaps this one hit me closer to home, given our brutal fire season this year. If you’ve been reading along, you might remember that we’ve been on fire nearby this year, and there has been A LOT of devastation. The Little Bear fire was crippling for so many. You can see pictures of Bonita Park here.
When we moved to Colorado from Michigan, wild fires and smoke jumpers were not something I was really familiar with. We had only been there a short time when the South Canyon Fire took place. In the end, 13 lost their lives, including 3 smoke jumpers.
In addition to the cowboys we see in Wal-Mart (often with spurs), come spring and summer, it is not unusual to see a large number of fire crews from all over the country converging on town. If you don’t know anything about these folks, the acknowledgements in the beginning of Firestorm give some excellent resources. It’s definitely worth your time to check these out, too.
I read your book review of Firestorm and loved it. You sound very real. And I thought it ironic that you mentioned Walmart in your blog… I work at their home office.
I found you on Blogging for Books and wanted to encourage you to post some of your book reviews on More Than A Review. I recently started this review site to promote good, clean books. I don’t mind you mentioning your blog at the bottom of your reviews. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me
More Than a Review doesn’t stop at reviewing a book’s style or story. We give you the chance to share with fellow book lovers a warning about objectionable material, just the way you’d give a friend a heads-up.
We’ve all been there … we heard that a book had a great plot, but there’s so much vulgarity or other offensive content that it’s hard to enjoy the book. Our site’s unique review system helps prevent that
Thank you, Donna. 🙂 I am a total book freak, as you’ve probably noticed. I’ll definitely check into the More Than a Review site, and will try to get to it when posting reviews. Things are going to be pretty hectic here for a while, but I’ll try to remember to let you know.
Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
When I lived in Pickle Lake, ON (which is in the middle of the bush, completely surrounded by forests), it was the firefighting base for the whole area north of us. We had a strong contingent of firefighters in town for the entire fire season (early spring until Thanksgiving usually). These people save lives all the time & became our friends year after year.