Ice Planet Barbarians - Ruby Dixon

 

Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon was a book always in my tbr pile, but to be honest, aliens really aren’t my thing. I get it, I get the draw honestly but they don’t do much for me, despite the fact I’m a massive Star Trek fan. 

So I was quite happy when reading the book I realised that it felt just like watching an episode of my favourite sci-fi show. This alone may help me forgive the few Star Wars references and no mentions of the superior franchise.

Our main character Georgie is abducted by aliens and imprisoned with several other women, taking them somewhere (this is left to our imaginations) when they crash land on a freezing planet with very few supplies. Georgie volunteers to leave the group and find some help. Her search lasts about five minutes before she is caught in a trap. A sexy aliens trap. 

The rest of the plot focuses mainly on the relationship between Georgie and Vektal, our sexy blue alien. Their first mutual, conscious encounter involves some non consensual oral sex, but it’s different from the non consensual rape from earlier in the book because this alien is sexy, or his motives aren’t violent or bad, she’s his “fated mate” or its enjoyable? I’m not sure what direction Dixon was heading with this but it’s in murky waters for sure. 

Moving on from dubious consent, Georgie and Vektal get to know each other, the communication between each other is very endearing seeing as they don’t speak each others language, and despite his rough looks, Vektal is sweet, attentive and protective. Ticking all the right boxes. 

When the sex becomes fully consensual it gets really good. The best spicy scene in my opinion is during their trek up the mountain. After some flirting and teasing between the two they explore each others weird and wonderful (well, they’re both technically aliens) bodies properly and thoroughly, and this discovery pushes them closer and closer together. It’s hot. Really hot. 

“Ice Planet Barbarians” is light, upbeat and fairly spicy. Nothing happens that is too intense in any direction. To me the rape scene at the beginning wasn’t too awful to read, though still bad and possibly triggering to some, but I did hear that the scene had been edited to be less graphic. While this book had a lot of hype surrounding it, I was expecting a lot more spice and a lot more plot, but that can just be personal preferences. It was a fun read, and as I wrote previously, did feel like an adventure romp in a Star Trek - like tv show episode more than anything else. 

Perhaps what bothered me the most about the book was the word “barbarian” in the title. Despite Vektal and his tribe being somewhat primitive, none of them showed barbaric tendencies. They were kind and gentle, both in the streets and in the sheets/fur. I had hoped for something a bit rougher. I prefer my monsters more monstrous. Not just a blue guy with a rampant rabbit dick.

You like all the characters as soon as you meet them, there’s no depth there really, but it’s not needed. I do feel that Georgie was written especially for the reader to self-insert which was rather easy to do, but at the end of the day, I didn’t really invest myself in the characters either. Yes it would have sucked if things had gone south for the crash-landed party but I wouldn’t have been devastated. There was no character development, despite an attempt at inner conflict, Georgie really had nothing to lose, except her two week friendships with the other abductees. 

All in all, I would bother. It was an enjoyable read, the potential for a lot more exploration of Not-Hoth and the Sa-Khui could be a lot of fun, and from what I saw there’s a lot of follow up books in the series,(well there were 11 women in that ship) so if you find yourself as immersed as Georgie was in those big blue hotties, you won’t be lacking in reading material.