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My rating: 4 of 5 stars (3.5 rounded up to a 4)
Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon is the first book in the erotic romantic science fiction series of the same name. It was initially published serially, but this version is the complete story. The eBook version is 188 pages. I listened to the Tantor Media audiobook, which clocks in a little under 6 hours and the dual POVs are narrated wonderfully by Hollie Jackson and Mason Lloyd.
I read the version released in 2017, which has a scene in the first chapter which I hear has been edited out in the most recent editions of this book. There’s also another scene a bit later on with dubious consent. Check the CWs at the bottom of this review for more (spoilery) details.
Our heroine, Georgie, is a just normal girl in Orlando who has bad dreams pretty often. One night, she wakes up in a strange place. She is in a cage with many others, all abducted by two varieties of horrible aliens who seem to traffic in human women. And then those aliens have ship trouble and decide to drop their cargo onto an ice planet, planning to pick it back up later. Georgie becomes the de facto leader of the group of women who now need to figure out how to survive in an alien world.
There is a lot of detail in the worldbuilding. The planet happens to be populated by tall blue alien barbarians who are looking for their mates. Our hero, Vektal, is the chief of the Sa-Khui tribe. The barbarians obviously don’t speak English, but when they find their fated mate, a vibrating purr emits from their chest. Their hands are as big as baseball mitts, their tongues have ridges, and as this is a monster romance… so do other things.
Tropes in this book include: alpha heroes, alien anatomy, destined mates
CW: rape in the first chapter (not the main POV character, not very detailed), abduction, human trafficking, dubious consent (main character awakens to a sex act being performed on her), death
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