Review: Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon
I am a bit abashed to have read this book. I recently decided to do a KU trial and do a little KU reading experiment. And obviously, this book is bananas popular so I knew I needed to include this.
First off, I was surprised by how well-written this book is. Which was rude of me. But it is such an easy read, nothing is clunky or confusing. I flew through this book.
I don't really have a ton to say about the reading experience. This book is absolutely bananas. Humans are kidnapped by some green aliens, a mishap occurs, and they crash onto an ice-covered planet. Georgie, our enterprising and legitimately brave heroine goes off to find food and water to help her fellow humans. She instead finds a giant blueish alien who she proceeds to fall in love with. The author uses the dual POV very well, her worldbuilding is understandable but bonkers, and the plot is very fast paced.
I do have negatives though. There is a character named Dominique who is raped by some of the orange aliens who work with the green aliens (it is also implied this happened to another girl). Then she is basically too traumatized to talk again. Then she is eventually found dead because she ran from the spaceship crash and no one could stop her from letting herself die of exposure. Shes probably on less than ten pages of this whole book but I really thought Dixon did not need to include her being raped, I accepted that the kidnapping aliens were bad before that, and if she had to keep it I really think it is terrible to then kill her.
I also think that the whole "mates are for babies" thing in general is pretty homophobic and weirdly Christian. There are so many ways where this book weirdly does not lean into some of the weirldy conservative stuff a lot of other romance does, but in this way it absolutely leans into it hard. I am not inherently opposed to the people having babies, that's some peoples jam (and this world apparently has a bit of a population crisis) but making the rule you cannot love someone who is not biologically able to procreate with you (at least theoretically) is def not cool.
Both of my issues with the story are things that don't really come up for most of the book, but they are significant things I needed to mention. But overall this book was kind of addictive, really easy to read, and just overall a really weird but fun romance.
I gave this book four stars.
