I really enjoyed this book, it was super easy to read and had just the right amount of spice without over-doing it. This book was the first "monster romance" I started with over a year ago and I have not looked back since, in fact I have become entrenched. Love me some sexy aliens. ( )

1st read: October 2020
2nd read: May 2022

I'm catching up on some of the novellas from the IPB series before I go back to the Icehome series, but I didn't remember a lot from the first few books, so here I am again.

This isn't my favorite IPB book, but it's a fun read and it does a great job setting up the rest of the series. It does have darker elements than the other books in the series. Women are kidnapped from earth and some of them are assaulted by the kidnappers. There is also some dubious consent when Vektal starts getting intimate with Georgie while she's asleep. The author puts a content warning at the beginning of the book and explains that the rest of the series isn't as dark. ( )

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

This months #TBRChallenge theme was Not in Kansas Anymore, Ice Planet Barbarians immediately came to my mind. The female main character in this is abducted by aliens and then crash lands on another alien planet and since this is erotic and she ends up going to town with an alien, it's a subgenre of romance that I don't frequently dabble in. The heroine and I, Not in Kansas Anymore!

First off, just let me say this:
Y'all. Wut.

That off my chest...

It wasn’t a monster come to eat me. It was this monster. Who’s come to eat me out.

Georgie wakes up groggy and confused, only to find out that she has been abducted by aliens. She's on a space ship in a holding cell with other young women and talking with one named Liz, she learns they are all young, healthy, and women who don't have any close familial ties from earth. The women in the holding cell seem to be “extras” as there are other women unconscious in pods.

Ok, I'm with you.

Then when another woman wakes up, she starts screaming, causing the other women to try and quiet her down, they're scared. The abducting aliens come into the room and grab the screaming woman and proceed to rape her repeatedly in the room in front of the other women. It's a very early scene and incredibly cringe worthy as the tone of this scene of rape did not fit in with what turns out to be a romance – erotic story; the way the whole thing was treated created a wonky vibe for me.

Georgie is an intrepid heroine, she sets a plan to get the aliens to come into the holding cell and then the women will attack and, I guess, try to take over the ship (??). The plan involves throwing the women's poop and pee bucket on the alien coming into the cell to stun it and then attack. The pee and poop gets thrown, covering Georige too, but as she's trying to battle the alien, the women abandon her in fear and don't help. Fortunately, the ship gets some problem with it at that moment and the aliens decide to ditch the prisoner pod and Georgie and the other women are now crash landed on an alien planet.

A lot of the women survive the crash but they're weak, cold, and starting to starve. One of the women was tagged with an interpreter sort of device to her ear (convenient!) and she heard the aliens say they were dumping them but going to come back for them with another ship. So pee and poop (I'm going to keep bringing this up) covered Georgie is sort of volunteered and picked to leave the ship to search for help. The world is close enough to Earth that Georgie can breath the air but it's temp is extremely cold. Just when she thinks she's going to freeze to death, she gets caught in a snare and a ribbed for her pleasure alien comes to the rescue.

We do get Vektal's pov, which I liked and helped to add to the humorous, winking at the reader that this is kind of ridiculous, tone of the story. On Vektal's planet, you need to accept a worm like thing into your body, or you'll die from the atmosphere and this worm like thing makes your eyes glow and picks out your soulmate for you (convenient!). It starts rattling/purring at the first sight of Georgie. So, naturally, Vektal begins eating out Georgie (who is covered in pee and poop) as she's still passed out from being in the snare. Georgie wakes up to what Vektal is doing to her and we get this line: “It’s ticklish and it makes me squirm and I should be screaming no, help, rape and instead, I have the giggles.”

Ok, I'm not really with you anymore.
Do you all see what I mean about cringing and wonky vibes in a winking humor, romance – erotic tone story delivering this line?

Georige's intrepid and smart (and still covered in pee and poop) and decides that Vektal is her best bet. They have a language barrier but kind of communicate enough to get some things across. Vektal's driving need is to feed and take care of Georgie, who he sees as his soulmate, while Georgie is trying to just not anger him and get him to go back up the mountain to help rescue the other women.

Georgie bathes off the pee and poop!
(I'm sorry, but I could not forget this and it ruined any chance I had of getting into the story up to this point until it was dealt with)

Vektal's dick is basically a Rabbit 7000 and after some sex, Georgie's starting to get attached to the big blue horned, tailed guy. A snow storm has them going to “The Cave of the Elders” which turns out to be a space ship that wrecked centuries ago and stranded Vektal's people on the plant. Georgie learns this because she some how activates the ship's computer who tells her all this and uploads Vektal's language to her brain so she can communicate with him (convenient!).

When Georgie is now able to tell Vektal about the other women, he is ecstatic, his people are dying because lack of available females. However, Georgie makes him promise that the women will have a choice in accepting their “soulmates” or not and since Vektal is the chief of their group (convenient!), he agrees. They go to Vektal's home to pick up more guys and then go to rescue the women.

At the crashed spaceship they deal with the abductor aliens coming back and then decide if they're going to stay on this planet, accept the worm like thing, or fly?? Vektal's cave of elders space ship back to Earth???? Staying, is obviously, the more convenient choice. The story leaves with someone else being a soulmate and ample women and big blue guys to eventually soulmate up for future books in the series. Vektal and Georgie's relationship is sort of there if you want sex and a little bit of friendship connection and the worldbuilding is sort of there if you want a couple paragraphs of alien lore. I would have rated this higher as a romance erotic story, it's quick and gets the job done but that rape scene and Georgie's thoughts, really jarred that feeling for me (not to mention the continued existence of Georgie covered in pee and poop). ( )

Blue Space Hunks. Blue Space Hunks that also happen to be Gentlemen. Blue Space Hunk Gentleman with pleasure-focused accoutrements. ( )

Pepper scale ( )