So I know there’s nothing wrong with reading smut (that’s what I’m calling this entire series), but it’s not usually my jam. I started listening to the first book because it had my name in the title. I was excited. Then I got into it and was like “oh boy, I’m reading alien porn”. I didn’t stop though. It’s actually alien porn with a touch of interpersonal drama, peril, natural disasters, and lots of focus on consent. These books are mostly fun. You can’t listen to them in front of others though! I went for a walk yesterday while I was listening to book 6, and forgot to grab headphones. It was ok because it was just the first like hour of the book, so there was nothing porny yet. Anyway, if you’re looking for some quick reading alien porn, this is your series!
So here’s the book that started it all for me. My real name is Lauren. I’m sorry if it’s shocking to anyone that my name isn’t actually kfishgirl. I don’t really know how I strayed into the “alien porn” section of my local (digital) library, but I got there somehow. Maybe I was bored, maybe I needed a break from murder, maybe I craved a little escapism!
So we meet Lauren when she wakes up on a strange spaceship. She was apparently kidnapped / abducted from Earth to be a sex slave, and the aliens on the Icehome island killed the baddies (in the air? I have no idea) and brought the ship back to their planet. They slowly woke everyone up and told them what happened. There were a lot of women, but also some aliens from different planets.
Lauren pretty much keeps her shit together and helps the other women to do the same. She gets separated from the group while they’re emptying out the ship to sink it. It’s apparently too dangerous to the people living on the island to have a ship there. They fear other invaders.
So Lauren and one other girl (Marisol I think) wash away into the super cold and creepy ocean and end up on a different island that’s warm. Big blue guys with four arms who can camouflage find them (separately though). Lauren and Marisol are rescued by different tribes, so they’re separate for most of the book.
Oh before Lauren got washed away, she got her couie. I have no idea how to spell that since it’s an audiobook. She calls it a cootie though. It’s some alien parasite that gets implanted in everyone’s chest when they reach adulthood, and it helps keep them warm and heal them if they’re sick or injured. The cootie also does this thing called “resonance” where it picks your mate. The new arrivals usually get a language translator implant too, but Lauren accidently left before that, so her and her blue man have to figure out how to talk to each other without the same language. Romance and a lot of sex ensue, and then there’s an erupting volcano!
My rating was 3.5 because I was trying to get into the world of this book, and like I said alien porn isn’t usually my jam! I know you’re looking at these book covers right now and saying that I should’ve known what I was getting into, but in my defense, I listen on my phone and they’re much smaller 🙂
OK so book two centers on Veronica, another stranded human.
Ooh I found the spelling of the parasite – khui
I actually hated this book when I started it. I only made it to about chapter four before quitting. Veronica was sooo down on herself and it was super annoying. My original review on goodreads:
As a 2024 gift to myself, I’m not going to read books that annoy me! I made it to like chapter 4 or so, and ALL that Veronica has done so far is talk down about herself and compare herself to other women. If I wanted that vibe I’d just go scroll through Facebook! A whiny and extremely low self esteemed main character is a no for me!
However, when I moved on to book 3 about Willa, Veronica showed up and was super cool and seemed to get over her issues, so I went back and finished it later. It turned out that I had already powered through all the crap and the rest of the book was good. Veronica’s mate Ashtar was one of the other captives on the ship, and it turns out that he’s a dragon. There’s all sorts of dragon backstory and info that was interesting to me. I’m glad I gave it another chance. And Veronica comes into herself as a healer, and she’s really cool in the end.
I only gave it a 3.5 though becuase of how annoying the beginning was.
Book 3 is about Willa and Gren. They were both captives on the ship too. They get their khui’s, but kind of run away before they can get their language translators implanted too. Willa gets upset because Gren is acting like a beast and they’re treating him like a beast. He’s snapping and growling at people, and they have to tie him up to stay safe. Willa decides that’s no bueno, and she sets him free and runs off with him.
They survive in the cold ass wilderness for a while, but the rest of the group eventually starts looking for them.
Willa and Gren need help from the healer because Gren gets hurt trying to save Willa from some little beasties that want to eat her. Willa is super sensitive about Gren being treated like an animal, but the rest of the big blue aliens are just there to help. It takes a while for her to realize that though.
Gren’s backstory is heartbreaking. He was basically put together by his masters to be a killing machine. He has parts from lots of other alien races and they’re not quite fitting together well. He needs a lot of help from the healer before he can actually survive and thrive.
Because of this issue, Willa and Gren are boinking like bunnies for like two weeks straight and not “fulfilling their resonance” (which basically means not getting Willa pregnant), so they need the healer again. I just liked how this random assortment of people and aliens start coming together like an actual tribe / family.
My rating: 3
This book is 3.5 in the series, so it’s apparently just a short little interlude. It’s probably the sweetest of the books though. It centers around Gail and her mate who are older and without children. Gail’s son on Earth was killed many years before she was abducted to the Icehome planet. She’s like a tribe mother to the rest of the people, but still wanted a baby of her own. When the tribe from the first book shows up on the shore after the volcano, they have a little baby whose mom died in the first volcano eruption. Gail and her mate immediately adopt him.
They don’t fully click for a while though, but Gail keeps trying.
There’s only a little bit of smut in this book, but it’s OK, because Gail is really endearing.
Also endearing is the way the aliens try to pronounce the human’s names. In a later book one of them is talking about Gail and I didn’t even realize because he was saying something like “GAhale”.
My rating: 3
Apparently book 4 is not available at my library yet, so as soon as it is, I’ll add that review in too!
So I read Veronica’s Dragon and Hannah’s Hero back-to-back, and I think that made me feel like these books were all the same – Girl doesn’t fit in / isn’t sure of herself, meets big strong man / why does he like me?, existential crisis, they fall in love.
Writing the reviews though, I realized that Lauren isn’t like that, and neither is Devi in the next book.
Hannah is miserable at the home camp on the beach of Icehouse. She’s neurotically sorting and counting the food and supplies because she can’t control her situation. She’s a little messed up in the head though because she keeps thinking and saying that she’s going home. There’s no ship, and there’s no chance of going home. She was apparently this close to becoming a rich and famous author, and she just can’t get over it. I guess I can relate to that, but she really takes it to the extreme. Oh and she immediately resonated to one of the big blue guys and she basically runs away from him over and over again.
Hannah and Mr. Hannah (can’t remember his name!) along with Brooke (BAhrook in alien pronunciation) and her mate travel to this fruit cave and hang out there. Mr. Hannah and Hannah get closer and I get less annoyed with her.
When they come back to the tribe on the beach eventually, there are games going on and they have to tell the group about the giant flying creature that might be coming to eat them all eventually.
My rating: 3
And now we come to what I realize was my favorite book so far. Devi does not give a shit if anyone likes her or if they think she’s weird. She’s super into the new and exciting animal life on the island because she’s a scientist. I think technically she’s some sort of paleontologist, so she can be persuaded by a bone (I mean that in the most non-sexy way).
She spends her days pulling dead creatures out of the ocean, dissecting them, and trying to figure out how they work. She catches the eye of N’dek, who was injured on his home island and is missing half of his leg. He’s basically moping and depressed, but then he sees a human who made a fake horn hat (most of the aliens have horns) and gets the idea that he could use a prosthetic leg.
N’dek asks Devi to help him in secret because he’s nervous it’s not going to work and he doesn’t want to be embarrassed. She asks him if she can hide her “notes” about the island creatures she’s dissected. Their interactions and cute and hilarious. She like straight faced asks him about his penis at one point in a totally scientific way and I was cracking up. I really liked both of these characters. The only weirdness was that throughout they both were convinced N’dek was going to resonate to Bridget. Side note – the aliens hilarious call her something that sounds very close to bird shit. It definitely has the word shit in it. Every once in a while they’re like “oh no, you’re going to resonate with Bridget, we can’t do this”, and I’m like “you guys are full of bird shit”.
Anyway, this was my favorite book and my favorite characters. There is definitely sex in this one too, but it’s almost more innocent and more exploratory. It felt less smutty than the others. My rating: 4
So as I get to the end of this review, having read 6 books in the Icehome series, I have a few thoughts. The author seems to be good at not making all the humans white thin women who are good at everything. Hannah is a larger girl (she calls herself fat, I do not. My motto is “we only call animals fat and even then they’re cute”), Devi is Indian with dark skin, and I’ve talked about the other women’s neuroses. The aliens are also varied with different colors, anatomy, and tribal / cultural backstories. Everyone so far is straight though, and everyone wants to / has to have babies. Those last two things bother me a little bit. I guess after reading so much Becky Chambers and T. Kingfisher, I realize that I like a little sexual diversity in my characters. I don’t know if this is just a romance thing, or if it’s an Icehome thing. As someone who does not nor never wanted children, I’m a little put off that resonance isn’t fulfilled until the woman is pregnant. What if you don’t want to be pregnant? So far that hasn’t come up. Some women were a little “ooh am I ready?”, but us non-children people exist too. Let’s see how it goes from here!