Book Review
Title: Ice Planet Barbarians (Ice Planet Barbarians Book 1) by Ruby Dixon
Genre: Science Fiction, Romance, Erotica
Rating: 5 Stars
I have seen this series all over TikTok lately and the love it is getting made me pick up the first half of the series, that’s ten books to see if it was any good. We are introduced to Georgie Carruthers, a bank teller, who is abducted by aliens like in every other alien romance. These aliens are collecting women in a very specific category to be sold off presumably as sex slaves. Georgie with the help of some other girls quickly learn how things work on this ship, the worst thing being if anyone screams they get raped by the guards which happens to one girl early on in the novel so be prepared for that. The ship they are being transported on experienced some trouble so the aliens dump the “cargo” onto the nearest planet to collect it later. Obviously all the girls have a very bumpy ride down to the planet where two are killed and several including Georgie are injured. They realise that the aliens haven’t left them any supplies presumably because it is only the girls in the cargo tubes that they will be coming back to get.
Now stranded on a frozen planet, the girls have to work out if there is food and water nearby or better yet a civilization of some sort and Georgie preposes that someone scouts the area and she ends up going because she is the defacto leader at the moment. While scouting Georgie almost gets eaten by a weird fish creature before getting snared in a trap, that obviously implies to her that there is an intelligent race living on this planet but she passes out from the cold before the hunter returns. When Vektal returns to his trap and finds Georgie in it, he realises she isn’t food and take her to a cave to warm her up. He notices around this point that she causes a resonance in him, meaning she is his mate but there is a language barrier between the pair. After giving Georgie one of the best wake up calls of her life, she tries to overcome this barrier first with her name then simple requests like food and water. However, she soon learns that the food Vektal eats isn’t really edible for her with their dried food being too spicy for humans and the raw fish is like sushi but not something Georgie enjoys. After spending the night in Vektal’s care, they go to bath in a sort of hot spring where Georgie tries to persuade Vektal into doing what she wants with sexual favours which seems to work as she is trying to get across to him that there are others like her that also need help. Vektal doesn’t understand Georgie’s request leading her to storm off only to fall into a crevice which seems to be filled with more of the planet wildlife which Georgie doesn’t want to spend any time around considering the last one tried to eat her.
Georgie spends a few days with Vektal before they begin to make their way back up the mountain when Vektal stumbles across the dead body of Dominque, the girl raped in the opening of the novel. He suddenly realises Georgie’s urgency to get back there was because there were more people like her and she confirms this taking him up the mountain to where the other girls are. The girls are obviously suspicious and wary of Vektal but when Georgie explains that he has been keeping her alive, they agreed to allow him to help them too. Kira who has the translator lets Georgie knows that Vektal believes that she is his mate and she knows that is something that has to be dealt with but the girls come first. Many are still injured and in addition to that one has a horrible cough and another has frostbite. Knowing that he can’t take all of them at once Vektal lets them know through Kira that only Georgie is fit to make the journey at the moment but in two days they can return with more of Vektal’s people who can bring all of them to their home. After some debate, Georgie leaves behind basically everything they have including furs, food and two of Vektal’s knives so that the girls can protect themselves which they are making the journey for help. Vektal and Georgie move at a much quicker pace this time knowing how urgent the journey is, but the time they stop to rest as this is going to be the only stop they make before reaching Vektal’s home. We have also learnt through Vektal that women among their kind are rare and right now there are only 6 female to the unmated 20 males and not all of those females are available for mating as some are mated and some are too young meaning the humans when Vektal explains he is mated to one as going to be in demand.
Georgie is the one who realises that the cave they are staying in is actually a ship and she manages to get it to power up enough so that the onboard AI can speak to her. Here she learns that Vektal’s people actually crash landed on this planet nearly 300 years before and that they developed a mutualistic symbiosis with a creature they refer to as a khui because the planet was toxic to them. The khui changed their bodies slightly to allow them to live at lower temperatures and to heal themselves, the ship also allows Georgie to understand Vektal by basically uploading their language into her brain. By the time they reach Vektal’s home and he explains to the others that there are more humans to be rescued many are excited because they are all women but Vektal as their chief explains that as humans don’t have a khui they can’t resonant and can only be taken with their consent. Vektal takes Georgie to a healer but there isn’t much she can do for Georgie without a khui and Georgie knows that she either needs to have a khui implanted in her in the next five day or leave the planet otherwise she will die due to the toxic atmosphere. It is also here that she learns through Vektal that the khui picks fertile females for them to mate with and she has the shock of a lifetime when she realises that she is late for her period meaning Vektal has gotten her pregnant when she was under the impression because of their different species that they wouldn’t be able to produce a child which angers her quite a lot as she is seemingly bound to Vektal whether she likes it or not now because of this child.
Georgie doesn’t have much time to dwell on this as they arrive back to the other girls and explain the situation about the khui and Vektal’s people. All the girls are suffering and need to khui if they are going to survive but they are undecided as to whether they should wake up the other six girls in the tubes. They eventually decide that they should in case the other aliens return and they explain the situation to them as well and they are understandably frightened. However, the aliens do return and the girls swiftly remove their trackers and hide with the help of Vektal and the others. Georgie also notices that at least one other male has resonated before they even get the khui and that process was interesting to watch as Georgie goes first and immediately faints. When she comes to she immediately feels her khui resonating with Vektal’s and the final couple of scenes were divine. We also know of one mated pair although the male is going to get into trouble for running off with Liz rather than waiting and taking things slowly as Vektal ordered but there are many more males taking his advice. While Vektal says not all of them have resonated with the other girls a lot of them have and since he already knows their kinds can produce offspring, it is going to be wild ride. Honestly, Ice Planet Barbarians was utter trash and I hate the fact I enjoyed it so much but I will definitely be continuing with the series and I 100% blame TikTok for it.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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