Ring of Fire, by Cinnamon Burke

I liked Cinnamon Burke's Rapture's Mist so much, that I got myself a couple more books from her backlist. One of them was Ring of Fire.

He was quite possibly the definitive athlete of his time. Arctic Warrior Ian St. Ives racked up more medals than anyone could count. Now, however, he earns his living by using his talents just as adeptly in the service of the Alado corporation as its top super secret spy and troubleshooter. So when miners start disappearing from a company asteroid, he is the natural agent of choice to be dispatched to clear the matter up.

What no one expects, himself included, is his wild attraction to gorgeous Haven Wray, leader of a women's Rocketball team that recently arrived on the asteroid to play in the championship tournament. The flames of passion burn at their very first encounter.

But someone does not want Ian to find out just what is going on in the mining colony, and the two are first kidnapped and then abandoned within a mysterious maze from which it will take all their strength and ingenuity to escape.

Unfortunately, while the setting was even more interesting, the romance didn't live up to the one in Rapture's Mist. My grade for this one would be a C+.

My main problem with Ring of Fire was that the characters never managed to rise above the two-dimensional. Ian and Haven were pretty flat, probably because Burke relied mostly on telling, not showing, so I never did get too involved in their romance. Add to this that Haven kept whining and whining and bursting into tears, and I just didn't care about this two people.

I still mostly had fun reading this, because I simply adored the setting and the idea of the book. Plus, it was all so campy. The whole thing put me in mind of some kind of 80s glam aesthetic, only in space.