1. Ice Planet Sexy Blue Demonic Alien is magically bonded to stranded human woman, panics, and abducts newly symbiote-infused lady to a mat14 Jan 2022
1. Ice Planet Sexy Blue Demonic Alien is magically bonded to stranded human woman, panics, and abducts newly symbiote-infused lady to a mating cave in hopes of winning her over. Yeah, I see the expression you're making right now and I get it. But it can't be helped. Sometimes the id demands something and will not shut up till it gets the goods.
2. I was actually looking forward to this one. At the end of book one, we had all the symbiote infections and two very cranky people who were clearly and unwillingly yoked together by the symbiote's baby making ways. The first book was also fairly okay about exploring the weirdness and the consent issues involved in the situation. Sadly, this book took away most of what made the first book work, and replaced it with a lot of random new stuff that did not.
3. Look, I get that the symbiote makes sex way more fun than it otherwise would be and results in tiny half-alien babies and whatnot but we already know that. This has been established. WHAT ELSE DOES IT DO is what I want to know. But the book is very, very uninterested in answering that, preferring to resort to more sex scenes instead.
4. The book tries some rudimentary social worldbuilding (we're done with the ecological stuff at this point I guess) but... hmm. I'm not sure how well it succeeded. I'm not sure how much sense it makes for a tiny colony obsessed with reproduction and with only a medium-level resource scarcity problem to abandon one of their own. I appreciate the book (view spoiler)[pointing out how this is a deterrent for similar future crimes, which ngl sounds like a very big problem (hide spoiler)] but it may have come a little too late as a plot point?
5. I liked Liz in the first book because she was a bitch and I love my bitches. But I think she lost an opportunity for better characterization in this one. The survival is not as much of a problem in this book, so the personality really needs to be something more than "snarky, independent woman with convenient archery skills." Hell, I would have taken even that if it had been consistent. But Liz goes from "OH HELL NO FUCK YOU ICE PLANT GET AWAY FROM MY VAGINA" to "I am okay with this actually babies and blue dicks here I come" ridiculously fast. It makes all the speeches she gave the ML (sorry man, I forgot your name) about agency and choice and whatnot ring a little hollow. Not because she made a choice I think is questionable (so did Georgie, from the first book) but because it was made out of a weird priority shift change that came from nowhere.
6. Well maybe not nowhere. Maybe it was because of the SF Fantasy magic dick. Whatever. I'm still not on board the happy with sex means happy with babies pipeline.
7. I'm also a little less than happy about how the whole exile thing was handled? It was still the most interesting part of the book. But. In addition to the population thing from Point #4, there seem to be no women (out of 11) who are internally screaming at this whole situation? Look if I was stuck somewhere without entertainment and where I was obligated to give birth after a three-year pregnancy you best believe there are going to be some injuries. I want you to be happy, ladies, but your lack of trauma is unsettling.
8. My favorite bit was the kidnapping. I gave a whole half star for the kidnapping + shit-stirring combo. See? I KNEW I'd like Liz if the whole baby making blue dick wasn't in the picture.
9. Anyway, I didn't dislike it and I'll probably pick up one of the other books in the series at some point to see if themes I actually want explored will be explored. But for now, I'm gonna head out....more
1. A group of human women are abducted by aliens and then stranded on an ice planet. One of the women head out from the crashed shi14 Jan 2022 CW: Rape
1. A group of human women are abducted by aliens and then stranded on an ice planet. One of the women head out from the crashed ship to look for help, and meets up with a hot blue demon man. First encounter survival romance ensues. There's also some more stuff about fated (for a given value of fated) romance partners, more horny blue men looking for mates, and a little bit of worldbuilding.
2. On many levels, I enjoyed this book. I am a sad sorry simp for any sort of survival story, and this was basically one of those till about the halfway mark, arguably even after that. I was also fine with the romance, which somehow managed to be mostly cute even with all the weird consent issues and it hitting up on many of my squick factors. (view spoiler)[I mean, the ladies are basically baby machines for the aliens and while circumstances make that easier to bear, it's still FAR from ideal. (hide spoiler)] I suppose it helped that the ML (I have already forgotten his name alas) was genuinely nice and helpful at all points, despite the amount of power he had over the FL throughout the story. So like- not ideal, but I get it.
3. There was actually very little worldbuilding, but I did like what we got. The (view spoiler)[Spaceship ex Machina (hide spoiler)] was a little much and jolted me out of the narrative a bit, but I can see how it might have been necessary to convince the humans to go ahead with the symbiote plan.
4. There was a lot of sex though. At least 30% of the book is sex. Which you know, gets a little boring if I'm not fully invested in the characters and their relationship. Which I wasn't, in this case. They do seem like fairly well-written sex scenes, at least? Keep in mind this is coming from someone who mostly skips the things and therefore has no frame of reference, though.
5. I actually picked this book up because some of the reviews went on about how funny it was. Which it really wasn't. It wasn't gloomy, but I don't really think I cracked more than a smile at any point. It was also way more brutal than I expected. Things mellow down a bit after they crash into the ice planet but the original abductors were, shall we say, not nice people.
6. To conclude, I voluntarily picked up a book titled "Ice Planet Barbarians" and ended up having a pretty good time so I'm going to count this one as a win. ...more
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