The Smoke Jumper

Rating:
Summary: A Smoke Screen
Review: Wow, what a stinker. Prior to this work, I had categorized Evans as Grisham-esque - that is, one of those reliable authors whose latest book you would buy despite not having heard anything about it, but finding it pleasing nonetheless. In true to form fashion, I excitedly purchased this book and plunged in that very night before going to sleep. I liked the way the story began, but soon afterward found myself mechanically finishing one page and starting the next. I kept reassuring myself throughout that if I kept going, the original storyline would surely reappear around the next bend. Alas, much like a lost hiker in the woods, it never found its way back and wound up perishing in a confusing jumble of switchbacks and tangents. Despite Evans' best efforts to pepper the tale with breadcrumbs in order to find his way home, I found the ending an all too convenient tying up of loose ends. I've convinced myself that the sidebar journey of Connor to chronicle the savagery within a warlord run country was just a mix up at the publishing house whereby two different manuscripts were combined in error before being sent to be printed. Despite all this, I will give Evans another chance on his next work and hope for the better.

Rating:
Summary: Predictable but diverting eternal triangle story
Review: The central theme of this leisurely--that is to say,overlong-novel is the familiar one of the eternal triangle.It depicts the course of the relationship between two men and a woman against a backdrop of the Montana forest lands and war torn Africa.
One of the men is Connor,a ranch worker cum smoke jumper ie one who parachutes into forest fires to cut fire breaks.The other is Ed,wannabe composer and scion of a wealthy Kentucky family who falls in love with the beauteous Julia.,and like Connor,a smoke jumper.A mutual attraction develops between Connor and Julia but loyalty to Ed ensures this does not achieve physical expression.
The turning point comes with the blinding of Ed in a fire and the death of Skye,a young delinquent in Julia's charge on a wilderness camp for wayward youth.
We follow the relationship as they part ,Ed and Julia to matrimony, Connor to his pursuit of a new career as a photographer,in the worlds trouble spots,mostly African,where against the backdrop of a violent Ugandan civil war,the conclusion is reached

Facile characters,and flat dialogue drag things down but there is just about enough going on to sustain interest.Unlike others I found the African section the most interesting ,partly because it is comparatively unexplored territory,and partly because the disenchanted view of that continent expresed by the author chimes neatly with my own.
My chief caveat is one voiced by myself before-excessive length.It does not justify 500 plus pages in the paperback edition and authors need to learn that sometimes less is more.

Rating:
Summary: Smoke Jumper's a great read
Review: Smoke Jumper is great because it takes us to places most of us have never been physically, and most likely will never go to, and yet takes us emotionally to places we've all been to. The buddy setup seems the direction of choice as Conner, the cowboy from Montana, and Ed, the rich kid city boy musician, bond when teaming up for the elitist smoke jumping bregade that fight western fires. Everything changes as Ed brings a girlfriend, Julia, into the mix who quickly creates an unsaid closeness to Conner. The story takes on some emotional strands as the close threesome split through tragedy, misfortune, and deep life altering chioces. As his best yet, I challenge Nicholas Evans to top this......

Rating:
Summary: What a Book!
Review: I was truly impressed. This is the first novle I have read by this author, but it won't be the last. This book is nothing like what is suggested by the title and is much more involved than I would have believed. A true romance is found, but only through the loss of loved ones, personal sacrifice and feelings of obligation, all enhanced by moral delima.

Rating:
Summary: 3 hours I can never get back
Review: This book was just plain bad. I rolled my eyes and made scoffing noise throughout and don't know why I bothered to finish it. I would have had a more entertaining time picking ticks off a dog.

From Chapter I, the ending was predictable and annoyingly so. The characters were bland except where a modicum of depth was imposed for the sake of continuing a boring story line. Everyone was oh, so amazing, perfect, talented, and wonderful, or tormented or beautiful and unaware of it. Yuk!

And, there were approximately four story lines at once that seemed to have little connection until the end. I'd pass on this one. Try a Harlequin Romance; there's more mystery, action/adventure, sex, and storyline.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: I read this book traveling one weekend and found it to be one one of the worst books I have ever read. Evans does nothing to develop the character potential, and the ending was contrived and sappy. Skip this one.

Rating:
Summary: Oh, this was a bad one...
Review: I'll skip the story descriptions that so many others have entered here. It always amazes me that, after having read a book that is very sappy, unbelievable and poorly written, I come to Amazon and read so many gushing reviews. Maybe my expectations are just too high, but I don't think that is the case. I read a lot of differnt books by a lot of different authors. I loved The Horse Whisperer, but this one was plain bad. The imagery and symbolism seemed forced, the characters weak, the dialog even was unbelievable and the whole story was just unrealistic. Yes, the smoke jumper part was interesting, but the rest of the story is so predictable. I just reached the part where Julia is going to go off to Uganda with her 8-year-old daughter. I think I'll throw my copy against the wall, too.

Rating:
Summary: Unreal
Review: Writer's block -- that's one possible explanation for this awful book. The first 1/4 of the book was interesting, concentrating on smokejumping. Then it seems Evans either picked up a plotline for a different book, had writer's block and was inspired by a "60 Minutes" segment, or faced a publisher's manuscript deadline. After increasingly predictable and syrupy "plot" turns, the protagonist -- if she can be called that -- moves herself and her adolescent daughter from Montana to a war zone in Uganda. At this point, my ability to suspend my disbelief was shattered and I threw the book against the wall.

Equally irritating was Evans' use of page after page describing characters' inner thoughts and feelings. Anyone capable of such complex thoughts should be a nuclear physicist. Any author who uses this technique should stop writing until he has an idea for a real story with real characters.

Rating:
Summary: For Love and Responsibility
Review: The Smoke Jumper

Two of the best descriptors for this adventuresome story are love and responsibility. From the beginning of the book which dwelt more on smoke jumping, to the middle part where friendships and love continued to develop and grow, to the last part where we learn the importance that the skill of smoke jumping , of love, and of responsibility have in this book. I liked all 560 pages that Nicholas Evans wrote for "The Smoke Jumper".

While you would be misled if you thought this book is mainly about smoke jumping, that focus is present in the story's first 200 pages, or so, and then the characters go on to other agendas. This is a love story. It is also a story of responsibility. Both love and responsibility are revealed amongst the three main characters as well as in their individual lives.

Rating:
Summary: Evans outdoes himself in this novel!
Review: New York Times Bestseller The Smoke Jumper by Nicholas Evans is amazing. Evans very much outdid himself and I can't wait for another novel to be in stores! The Smoke Jumper can be fairly predictable at times, and it confuses you a little with the first couple of chapters, but trust me, you will get used to the jumping of person to person in each chapter.

The novel starts off talking about young Skye, a girl of fifteen who is completley confused with life, with her mother and herself abused and treated like dogs by her step-father, she sits in a bar smoking a cigarette with her friends for a celebration of her fifteenth birthday. She spots her step-father and all hell breaks loose when he spots her as well ....

Then it jumps to another chapter about Ed Tully, and I was like what happened to Skye? You later on find out that she is not the main character, and that's what I loved about this book, was that it didn't right away start off talking about the main character. Skye was byfar my favorite character in the novel though. :) This is a must read for anyone and everyone!