Rating: 
Summary: The third one isn't so charming this time...
Review: This book turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. I really liked The Horse Whisperer, and loved The Loop, but The Smoke Jumper falls well short of both. The story begins with two best friends, Ed Tully and Connor Ford, who spend their summers "smoke jumping" - that is, parachuting into remote locations to fight forest fires. Then Ed falls in love with the beautiful Julia Bishop. Their relationship is perfect until he introduces her to Connor, and girlfriend and best friend find themselves fighting an intense attraction to each other, which mortifies them both in light of their love and respect for Ed. Julia spends the summer as a counselor in a rehab program for delinquent teens, taking them camping in the mountains in hopes of recovering their lost souls. Disaster strikes when a forest fire claims the life of one teenager, badly scathes and blinds Ed, and leaves Julia consumed with feelings of guilt over them both.Here the story takes an abrupt change in direction. Julia, overwhelmed by feelings of obligation, helps Ed adjust to life without sight, and ultimately marries him. Connor, unable to bear seeing the woman he loves married to another man, takes off to begin a new career as a photojournalist in the various war-torn countries of the world, returning from time to time for brief visits. When Julia and Ed are unable to have a child due to Ed's apparent sterility, they convince Connor to father a child for them. Shortly thereafter Connor departs for good, thrown into despair at the realization that he is now severed not only from Julia, but also from a daughter that is not his. It is only after Ed's eventual death that Julia can embark upon a journey of her own and allow herself the hope that perhaps she and Connor might be united at last. If the above synopsis of the story seems a bit disjointed, that should give you an idea of how the book itself runs. Evans has created a hodgepodge of settings, plotlines, and themes that undermine the significance of the title. Less than half of the book actually deals with smoke jumping (and even here it is not the primary object of the story), with the theme only recurring briefly at the very end, under entirely different circumstances. Perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that Evans "dabbles" with themes. He dabbles with smoke jumping, he dabbles with delinquent teenagers, he dabbles with music, he dabbles with blindness, he dabbles with photography, and he dabbles with various wartorn places such as Bosnia and parts of Africa. None of them really has anything to do with the central love triangle, and seem tacked-on and interchangeable. In the second part of the book, each time we see Connor, he is in a new place, in the middle of a different war or conflict. We get bits and pieces of the various stories, but the reader is left at best indifferent and at worst downright confused due to the lack of groundwork for the scenes. We are simply plopped down in one place for a short while, then snatched right back up, never to return. There is not enough devlopment for us to truly understand or even to care what is going on in each of the places Connor finds himself. Another problem, partly stemming from the above and partly due to the writing style, is that the story seems very unrealistic. One can't really imagine all of this happening in real life. The interaction between characters frequently seems affected and unbelievable. The dialogue is often unnatural. In particular, the speech and mannerisms of the teenagers in Julia's program, and later of her own 8-year-old daughter Amy, do not reflect the actual patterns of speech and behavior of children in those age groups. Adding to the sense of falsity is Evans's frequent use of cliche ideas and phrases such as "I've loved you from the first moment I saw you," and "he woke with a start and for a moment couldn't figure out where he was." Such declarations and images have been so overused that one can only groan at coming across them yet again. I was also horrified by the scene in which a young African soldier is made to publicly appologize to a girl he raped in front of all their peers. In real life such a display would be utterly humiliating to the victimized girl, especially considering that she had told no one about the incident. And yet the girl in the story seems absolutely fine with the arrangement. There are also a few factual errors in the book which, while relatively insignificant, still disappointed me slightly. For example, Amy has curly hair, while both her parents - Julia and Connor - have straight hair. Curly hair is a dominant trait in humans, so if a person carries the gene for curly hair, they will HAVE curly hair. Therefore, neither Julia nor Connor could have carried the curly hair gene, since both have straight hair, and so there is no way Amy could have inherited a curly hair gene from either one. So far I've only expounded on the faults I've found with the book, but I must say it's certainly not among the worst I've ever read. While not entirely engaging, it is moderately entertaining and very easy to read. For a reader less nit-picky than myself, the storyline may even be enjoyable. It's the kind of book to take with you to a doctor's office waiting room or similar situations, where you aren't inclined to read something "heavy" and yet still need to pass the time. Overall though, I wouldn't highly recommend it. It just doesn't live up to Evans's potential, and I'm sure you can find numerous more worthwhile alternatives in recreational reading material.
Rating: 
Summary: Not quite
Review: Unhappily, these characters just seem "too cute" for me to
believe or become interested in. The whole atmosphere of
this book seems highly artificial, and it is difficult to
get interested in the story or the characters.
Rating: 
Summary: Took my breath away...
Review: literally - I found myself on the edge of my seat and holding my breath so many times while reading this wonderful book that I would have to set it aside, calm down, and return to it later. I can't remember the last book that made me care so much about the characters, to the point that the tension became almost unbearable. If you like Evans' first two novels I think you will like this one, too, but be prepared for a much edgier story and more nail-biting action.
Rating:
Summary: A JOURNEY INTO THE COMPLEXITY OF LOVE!!!
Review: Nicholas Evans is perhaps the one male author of adult romance novels who best conveys the essence what love between a man and a woman can be like when it reaches an almost mystical level of awareness, interaction, and commitment. In Mr. Evan's newest novel, THE SMOKE JUMPER, he continues the same theme that resonated throughout his first bestseller, THE HORSE WHISPERER, which centers on an extremely passionate and unrelenting love between two people who, for reasons beyond their control, are unable to fulfill this potential for a life-long relationship with each other. Connor Ford is a Montana cowboy who has a passion for two things: photography and smoke jumping. During the summer months of each year in the state of Montana, Connor joins an elite group of fire fighters known as "smoke jumpers." They are the ones who are dropped in by parachute to fight the raging forest fires that pop up throughout the state. When Connor finally meets the new girlfriend, Julia Bishop, of his closet buddy and fellow smoke jumper, Ed Tully, it's love at first sight. Julia, of course, feels the same way about Connor. This is the conflict that they will have to wrestle with throughout the rest of the book because Ed is a great guy whom they both love dearly, and neither one of them wants to hurt him. This becomes more evident when Ed is seriously injured during a rescue attempt to save Julia and a group of teenagers during a forest fire. Julia later marries Ed out of a sense of obligation, and Connor takes his camera and heads overseas to the war-torn countries of Bosnia and Uganda to learn his craft as a photojournalist. After many years have passed, a time comes when Connor learns that the lives of Julia and her young daughter are in grave danger and that he's the only one who can save them. He will don a parachute once again and put his life on the line as he jumps alone into a raging inferno of fire and bullets to save the two people who mean the most to him. THE SMOKE JUMPER is a powerful novel of love, adventure, sacrifice, and heroism in its most pure form. Written from the heart by an author who understands that the process of love is never easy and will often lead its recipient on a quest of historic proportions, this novel is one that will definitely appeal to both men and women, allowing them to catch a glimpse into the nature of what it truly means to love another human being. I especially enoyed the author's poem, "Walk Within You," and its poignant message about the transcendence of love after death. Also, the scene near the end of the novel, when Connor Ford goes to the rescue of Julia and Amy gave me goose bumps and caused a big, silly grin to erupt across my face. I'm a sucker for these kinds of heroic moments in any novel, but more so when love and the heart are involved. I found THE SMOKE JUMPER to be a fantastic reading experience, equal to that of THE HORSE WHISPERER, and my only wish is that Nicholas Evans was more of a prolific writer, publishing a novel every twelve-to-eighteen months, instead of every three years.
Rating:
Summary: Love and Friendship, Loss and Redemption......
Review: Smoke Jumper is a fast paced story, and even though it seemed like you knew where the story was going, it was still hard to put it down!
The story centers on the friendship of two young men, Connor Ford, a quiet photographer from a ranch in Montana, and Ed Tully, a musician from a wealthy Southern family. What they have in common is being smoke jumpers, which forges a very strong bond between them. Ed falls in love with a young woman, Julia Bishop, from a New York working class family and brings her to Montana. The three of them enjoy a strong friendship. The fire season begins and between Ed and Connor smoke jumping and Julia's work with troubled children the story begins to take unexpected turns. The friendship is tested when life and death decisions have to be made. The aftermath of these events ends in the marriage of Ed and Julia. Meanwhile Connor takes his photo-journalism interests to a professional level, ending up in all the war torn hell holes he can photograph. The author Nicholas Evans rapidly pulls the reader into a tale of love and friendship, loss and redemption. While some of the events are a bit of a stretch the story still holds the reader tight in it's grip. This was a good novel even with the predictability which is present but the paths it takes are varied enough to maintain a fast paced tale.
I had just finished reading FIRE by Sebastian Junger which is a true life story of Firefighting in the mountains, combined with stories of wartime in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Kosovo. It was an odd combination of good books, one fiction and one non-fiction. Together these books give an amazing view of people in these fields.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the jump.
Review: This book is by far the best work of a brilliant writer. Evans creates wonderful charactars that are easy to care about, and will keep you turning pages. This is a beautiful story of human emotion, choices, and love. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite
Review: Unhappily, these characters just seem "too cute" for me to
believe or become interested in. The whole atmosphere of
this book seems highly artificial, and it is difficult to
get interested in the story or the characters.
Rating:
Summary: Books Never Make Me Cry
Review: But this one did... I was so moved after reading this that I thought about it for days. Nicholas Evans has a way of wedging his characters into both your brain and your heart.
Rating:
Summary: Don't let the title fool you!
Review: This was an EXCELLENT book! Ladies, don't let the title fool you. If you think you may not like this because it is about smoke jumpers, think again. Two of the main characters are smoke jumpers but there's much more to the book. It's more of a love story than a story about smoke jumpers. I would think this book would appeal more to women than to men. The author does a really good job in building the characters. Sometimes I get bored with a book half way through and stop reading it. This kept my attention and it was hard to put down!
I hope they make a movie out of this book! An interesting storyline, characters that you'll feel like you know personally, making it all a book that you'll wish could go on and on.
Rating:
Summary: Good on first read, better on the second!
Review: At the first read, this book seems very different from both The Horse Whisperer and The Loop. For one thing, time span of the story in the Smoke Jumper is significantly longer than both the former. While The Horse Whisperer was a story stretched only a few months and The Loop for a year, The Smoke Jumper covers events up to a few years. What this means is this book does not have the luxury of the former 2 to have the completeness in every detail of the story. I was initially quite disappointed with the lack of conversations (which are Nicholas Evans strong points) and details in the story, coming from strong expectations after The Loop, which I thought was superb. However the more I read into it, the more I realized the grand scale of this story. I didn't fully appreciate the story until the I read it the second time. It is without a doubt a very tragic story. You can't help but feel for all the characters, especially the unfairness of life towards Ed. All of them just become alive at the hands of Nicholas Evans. Certain scenes were so memorable I find myself kept picturing it over and over again in my mind and more than likely will bring tears to your eyes. The most memorable parts were Julia's rescue by Connor, Connor's confession, Ed's final letter and the last few pages of the book. This is one story I will remember for a long, long time.
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