What do you think?
Rate this book
Fountain of Fire
She danced to the music of love...
NINA RAMBOVNA: from court to countryside, from slavery in China to fame in the new world, her breathtaking beauty inflamed the passions of many men. But she would give her heart to only one...
AKIR SOONAY: as exotic as he was elusive...he could kill a man one moment, make love to a woman the next. He would search the seas of the world to find one woman who could match his spirit.
COUNT ALEXI KURBETOV: when he could no longer stand just to watch the lithe body of his young charge, he arranged a series of bold kidnappings that forced Nina into the arms of the wrong man.
JAMES DUNCAN: he taught Nina new ways to love, and she was a willing pupil. But his passion for his land, his people, was a lesson she could never master.
NINA RAMBOVNA: from court to countryside, from slavery in China to fame in the new world, her breathtaking beauty inflamed the passions of many men. But she would give her heart to only one...
AKIR SOONAY: as exotic as he was elusive...he could kill a man one moment, make love to a woman the next. He would search the seas of the world to find one woman who could match his spirit.
COUNT ALEXI KURBETOV: when he could no longer stand just to watch the lithe body of his young charge, he arranged a series of bold kidnappings that forced Nina into the arms of the wrong man.
JAMES DUNCAN: he taught Nina new ways to love, and she was a willing pupil. But his passion for his land, his people, was a lesson she could never master.
448 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 12, 1981
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 11, 2023
I'm giving this book three stars because it taught me some Hawaiian history and I learned a bit of its culture, customs and a few words of the language. If not for this, it would have only gotten two.
It started out really good, with Russian ballerina, Nina (excuse the rhyme), h of the story, being rescued from her evil guardian, Kurbetov by James, one of the two H in the book. She foolishly gets back in K's clutches again and ends up in China, about to be auctioned off as a white slave, but again rescued, through the dual efforts of James and Akir, H number two.
While a frustrated Akir keeps his love to himself, Nina goes with James to his Hawaiian home, planning to start a new life in San Francisco and resume her dance career, but instead ends up falling for the island and for James. Despite culture clashes, she's happy there and despite no marriage proposal, Nina accepts being James's mistress, and then Ms. Verrette gives up originality for the usual HR nonsense:
Rather than explain his relationship with his former girlfriend, Moana (he's concerned about her addiction to opium), James keeps Nina in the dark about his visits to her, until misunderstanding gossip and finding James and Moana in a compromising position drive Nina to do what so many TSTL girls do: run away, without confronting James! Next thing you know, she's aboard ship with Akir and Michael, (the captain and a good friend of James), on route to San Fran.
It takes a long time to get there, and I'll leave the reasons to anyone who cares to read this book.
James can be classified as a TSTL man, as he should have told Nina about Moana's drug addiction, then she wouldn't have had suspicions and or misunderstood what she saw. (A totally stoned, nude Moana had thrown herself at James and they fell on the bed.) He knew she was on the ship and followed her before it sailed, then decided she'd be too upset to listen to explanations and thought it best to let her go to SF, where he's hopefully catch up with her the next time he visited the city, when she'd more likely listen to reason. (WTF!!!!!)
An even bigger WTF was the fact that that whole mess with Moana happened the night a volcano started erupting. it wasn't serious, but it frightened Nina, who woke up in bed alone, because James had gone to make sure Moana wasn't too out of it to protect herself. He didn't think that perhaps Nina might wake up frightened and be even more so without him there????? His first thought was for his ex-lover, the opium addict, who'd been a pain in the ass ever since their relationship ended? Oh, COME ON!!!!
Too much in this novel was silly, like Nina going to a Native priest, skilled in island folklore and ritual, to remove a curse she supposedly got from unwittingly being lured to forbidden ground. Ms. Verrette starts an island ritual, then abruptly changes the scene, without further info. (My guess is, she couldn't think of anything and hadn't done any research or found anything out, so she cut it short to hide this fact. (Didn't hide it from me!)
Also, Nina had become friendly with the servants, started learning Hawaiian (just like James had taught her English, which she learned pretty fast), helped them make proper clothes for her (muumuus and sarongs) and let them watch her practice dancing. All of a sudden, she overhears a conversation she only partly understands and thinks they're talking against her. TOO RIDICULOUS!!
Ms. Verrette goes for another HR trope, when she has Nina discover aboard ship that she's pregnant. Almost immediately, she miscarries. So why make her pregnant at all? My guess is that she was going to go in the typical direction of having Akir, in order to prevent Nina from the stigma of being an unwed mother (and because he was in love with her), offer to marry her and give the baby his name. Then, of course, James would find them, be angry at the marriage, assume the baby was Akir's, Nina would keep the truth from him, etc. Then, while writing, she decided to take the story in another direction, hence the miscarriage.
Akir should have been the only H in the story. He went through so much for Nina, hiding his feelings, while she seemed to regard him as a good friend/big brother, not showing his pain and jealousy at her relationship with James and later, her considering marrying another man, meanwhile having to rescue her from the unwanted attentions of yet another man (for a supposed innocent, this girl does get around), all the while not letting her know how he really feels.
Later, when circumstances draw them together, no one can blame him for finally acting on his repressed feelings and seducing her. It's about time this guy got some happiness (as well as sex, as he'd been without a woman longer than Nina had been without a man, as he reminded her.) They lived together in SF, she resumed her dance career, he asked her to be his wife, and then...
You guessed it! James returns! With just a few words of explanation about Moana, Nina forgets everything (including Akir) and gets naked with James! The same woman who was so outraged at the thought of James betraying her with Moana has no problem betraying Akir with James! What a hypocrite! (Not to mention that, unlike Akir, James never offered her marriage and - also unlike Akir - James doesn't take her love of dance all that seriously.) What's even worse, Nina doesn't tell James her true relationship with Akir, she can easily toss that aside as if it doesn't matter now.
This is how she rewards Akir for all he did for her, for all his patience, for all the times he ignored his own feelings and desires, for all the sacrifices he made to help her!!! I found myself hoping the next time she did a pointe technique, she'd break all her toes!!!
And this is where I left off reading, because I was too angry to continue. I tried skimming, discovered James had found his long-lost sister, but while I'd have liked to read more about it, I didn't want to bother, as I knew it would end with Nina finding a HEA with one of those guys, and in my opinion, she didn't deserve one. At any rate, I hope it was with James, because he deserved to get stuck with her, while Akir deserved a heck of a lot better!!!
It started out really good, with Russian ballerina, Nina (excuse the rhyme), h of the story, being rescued from her evil guardian, Kurbetov by James, one of the two H in the book. She foolishly gets back in K's clutches again and ends up in China, about to be auctioned off as a white slave, but again rescued, through the dual efforts of James and Akir, H number two.
While a frustrated Akir keeps his love to himself, Nina goes with James to his Hawaiian home, planning to start a new life in San Francisco and resume her dance career, but instead ends up falling for the island and for James. Despite culture clashes, she's happy there and despite no marriage proposal, Nina accepts being James's mistress, and then Ms. Verrette gives up originality for the usual HR nonsense:
Rather than explain his relationship with his former girlfriend, Moana (he's concerned about her addiction to opium), James keeps Nina in the dark about his visits to her, until misunderstanding gossip and finding James and Moana in a compromising position drive Nina to do what so many TSTL girls do: run away, without confronting James! Next thing you know, she's aboard ship with Akir and Michael, (the captain and a good friend of James), on route to San Fran.
It takes a long time to get there, and I'll leave the reasons to anyone who cares to read this book.
James can be classified as a TSTL man, as he should have told Nina about Moana's drug addiction, then she wouldn't have had suspicions and or misunderstood what she saw. (A totally stoned, nude Moana had thrown herself at James and they fell on the bed.) He knew she was on the ship and followed her before it sailed, then decided she'd be too upset to listen to explanations and thought it best to let her go to SF, where he's hopefully catch up with her the next time he visited the city, when she'd more likely listen to reason. (WTF!!!!!)
An even bigger WTF was the fact that that whole mess with Moana happened the night a volcano started erupting. it wasn't serious, but it frightened Nina, who woke up in bed alone, because James had gone to make sure Moana wasn't too out of it to protect herself. He didn't think that perhaps Nina might wake up frightened and be even more so without him there????? His first thought was for his ex-lover, the opium addict, who'd been a pain in the ass ever since their relationship ended? Oh, COME ON!!!!
Too much in this novel was silly, like Nina going to a Native priest, skilled in island folklore and ritual, to remove a curse she supposedly got from unwittingly being lured to forbidden ground. Ms. Verrette starts an island ritual, then abruptly changes the scene, without further info. (My guess is, she couldn't think of anything and hadn't done any research or found anything out, so she cut it short to hide this fact. (Didn't hide it from me!)
Also, Nina had become friendly with the servants, started learning Hawaiian (just like James had taught her English, which she learned pretty fast), helped them make proper clothes for her (muumuus and sarongs) and let them watch her practice dancing. All of a sudden, she overhears a conversation she only partly understands and thinks they're talking against her. TOO RIDICULOUS!!
Ms. Verrette goes for another HR trope, when she has Nina discover aboard ship that she's pregnant. Almost immediately, she miscarries. So why make her pregnant at all? My guess is that she was going to go in the typical direction of having Akir, in order to prevent Nina from the stigma of being an unwed mother (and because he was in love with her), offer to marry her and give the baby his name. Then, of course, James would find them, be angry at the marriage, assume the baby was Akir's, Nina would keep the truth from him, etc. Then, while writing, she decided to take the story in another direction, hence the miscarriage.
Akir should have been the only H in the story. He went through so much for Nina, hiding his feelings, while she seemed to regard him as a good friend/big brother, not showing his pain and jealousy at her relationship with James and later, her considering marrying another man, meanwhile having to rescue her from the unwanted attentions of yet another man (for a supposed innocent, this girl does get around), all the while not letting her know how he really feels.
Later, when circumstances draw them together, no one can blame him for finally acting on his repressed feelings and seducing her. It's about time this guy got some happiness (as well as sex, as he'd been without a woman longer than Nina had been without a man, as he reminded her.) They lived together in SF, she resumed her dance career, he asked her to be his wife, and then...
You guessed it! James returns! With just a few words of explanation about Moana, Nina forgets everything (including Akir) and gets naked with James! The same woman who was so outraged at the thought of James betraying her with Moana has no problem betraying Akir with James! What a hypocrite! (Not to mention that, unlike Akir, James never offered her marriage and - also unlike Akir - James doesn't take her love of dance all that seriously.) What's even worse, Nina doesn't tell James her true relationship with Akir, she can easily toss that aside as if it doesn't matter now.
This is how she rewards Akir for all he did for her, for all his patience, for all the times he ignored his own feelings and desires, for all the sacrifices he made to help her!!! I found myself hoping the next time she did a pointe technique, she'd break all her toes!!!
And this is where I left off reading, because I was too angry to continue. I tried skimming, discovered James had found his long-lost sister, but while I'd have liked to read more about it, I didn't want to bother, as I knew it would end with Nina finding a HEA with one of those guys, and in my opinion, she didn't deserve one. At any rate, I hope it was with James, because he deserved to get stuck with her, while Akir deserved a heck of a lot better!!!
Displaying 1 of 1 review