He wears leather, eats raw meat, and hunts with slings and bone knives. Big guy’s probably never heard of a space heater, much less a spaceship.
― Ruby Dixon, Ice Planet Barbarians
CBR17 Bingo: Letter I
When I came across this special edition in the used book section of one of my favorite bookstores, I decided to buy it because I’d heard it was good and because it was only $5. But then I remembered the tower of unread books in my TBR pile and reluctantly placed it back on the shelf.
The next day, I was chatting with a friend about how I resisted the urge to buy it. Her immediate response was, “I want it! I don’t know if I’ll read it but I want it!”
I returned the following day and snapped it up. But this left me with a new dilemma: did I have enough time to read it before handing it over? It turned out that yes, yes I did.
Georgie wakes inside a cage. Along with several other women, she has been abducted by aliens. The women don’t know why they were kidnapped, but they know that whatever their captors intend to do with them, it is not good.
She and her fellow captives come up with a plan to disable their guards long enough to overtake the ship. Even though they don’t know where in the universe they are, fighting is better than whatever is waiting for them at their destination.
Amidst the attack, the alien ship malfunctions and they crash land on an ice planet. The aliens detach the captive’s holding cell and leave the women behind, presumably for retrieval at another time. The women can escape now, except they had the misfortune of landing on an ice planet. As the de facto leader, Georgie bundles up, leaves what remains of the ship, and is promptly ensnared in an animal trap. When one of the planet’s inhabitants, a massive blue-skinned alien named Vektal, comes looking for his dinner, he finds Georgie instead. He also discovers that his khui (his life force) begins to resonate. As this is something that only happens once in a lifetime, Vektal vows to protect this strange creature.
I’d been curious about this series for a while but had no burning desire to read it. The reviews about it intrigued me mostly because one of its most compelling points was how sweet the aliens were to their human mates. Plus, I’m up for reading anything with a ridiculous premise as long as the characters are interesting.
And it delivered! I read this over two days. The characters and world building are interesting enough for me to want to pick up book two, but also light enough to use as pure escapist silliness. My main complaint is that the women, including Georgie, seem fine with becoming mates in a primitive society. It’s clear that they would have a tough time surviving on their own, but the transition from captives to “happy little cave wives” was sort of gross to read. Then again, the series is about human women falling in love and living on an ice planet with big, blue aliens, so I guess you get what you pay for.
The special edition includes two short stories that take place after book 2, Barbarian Alien.
TW for description of a rape that occurs in the first couple of chapters. In this edition, the author amended the more graphic rape description in the original version, but the amended version is still very disturbing so proceed with caution.