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24 oeuvres 266 utilisateurs 30 critiques 1 Favoris

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Œuvres de Amanda Milo

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female
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USA

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This book took place at the same time as the previous book in this series, but it skipped a lot of the previous book's timeline and really started where the previous book was about 3/4 finished. It then took the story arc further. The same characters from the previous book were in this one, but like most paranormal or romance series the focus was on a new "couple".

In this book there were elements that were different between the hero and heroine than in the previous one.

In this book our hero is the older and bigger/badder brother of the hero in the previous book. He has rescued what turns out to be the woman he has been literally dreaming of his whole life from gang-rape. We don't read about the actual rape, and we don't get much in the way of flashbacks, and the aliens that raped her were not humanoid so there isn't too much of a trigger (imho).
The heroine is very jumpy, and deals with depression and flashbacks of her attack. However, she too has been dreaming of this alien hero throughout her life. It turns out that the music she has heard in her head her entire life - which was the catalyst to her dancing career- was her alien hero "talking" to her in his dreams.
This book spends time with the hero and heroine struggling to help the heroine work through the trauma she suffered at the hands (claws?) of her attackers and also further develops the story-line of life on an alien planet where the humans are being held in "captivity" with their new alien mates to be studied (most humanly) by another alien species.

There are the same secondary characters in the previous book, and its pretty obvious that the series is going to focus on them in the next books.

Note - this book contains multiple chapters of a new book further down the series at the end which make it a bit longer than it should read in the page count. Also, this author does like her spaces between paragraphs, which also bumps up the page count. However, the story is well fleshed out, there is character development and growth, and like the previous book the sex is not a major part of the book. It is character and story driven, and not set up with various scenes only providing a scaffold to raunchy alien sex. So...if you're looking for that, you will be disappointed.
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Signalé
Library_Breeder | 5 autres critiques | Apr 28, 2023 |
So this was the book that started my fore into the "Humans as Pets to Aliens" genre.

It's told in the first person POV of an alien scientist who is in charge of the "Pet Project", a scientific study in the procreation of human pets. Can't remember how the come across the people, but they end up with them on their planet and because the aliens are so big they see humans as we see dogs. As beloved pets. This scientist is in charge of four humans, a woman and three men. He is very excited and hopes that he is able to prove himself in the field. He hopes to breed the humans and get specific characteristics from them.

It is such a fun story when we see the humans from an aliens perspective. We can even hear the "pets" speak in "gibberish" but if you read carefully you can easily tell what they are saying.

Out alien scientist is having a hard time getting the "handsome" and docile male to mate with the female. He does everything he can, but the male just isn't interested. Is it his diet? Is he sick? No, what we find out that the alien can't understand is that he's gay. Meanwhile, there is another male who is kind of beat up and scarred, whom the scientist isn't too keen on getting to breed with the female, but it turns out that they really like each other.

This is a great read, and the following books in the series are fun as well. There are no real sex scenes, or violence. As soon as I was done with this one, I read the other three.

Now, I am hunting around for more of these "humans as pets" types of books.

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Signalé
Library_Breeder | Apr 28, 2023 |
I really liked Amanda Milo's "Pet" series, but this book didn't quite do it for me. First, I had a problem trying to picture the alien in my mind. Although Amanda did describe it, I still couldn't imagine it.
From the book:

"My frame is taller than theirs by three, nearly four measures." - Ok is he three or four inches, feet, heads or times their (humans) size? I had this problem picturing the human/alien size difference in the Pet series as well and just started imagining humans reaching up to hip height.

"chitin plates protect my innards" - Chitin is what covers insects and other exoskeletal beings - so does this mean he has only an insect like body? His arms, legs etc., or does he just have some kind of shielded stomach?

“We’re going to need a saw to get through his exoskeleton.” - Our hero wakes up in some kind of hostage/kidnapped scenario and this is what he hears. Since this line comes before any of the other descriptions of our hero, I am immediately picturing a very hard, unforgiving exoskeleton all over. This is my first "insect" image.

"They don’t appear to have fangs. I have them"- ok he has fangs, not a problem picturing that.

"I have no hairs anywhere and I’m crowned with a pair of very long, fine antennae."- Ok, I'm back to picturing an insect.

"They have no tail. Mine is nearly as long as they are tall. My tail is laterally compressed halfway down its length, and the triangular plates that adorn it emerge all the way up my spine. Thankfully, these plates press flat, which is particularly helpful when I’m strapped down on my back. "- Soooo...a long tail that is flat along the sides about halfway down? Lateral means is I pressed my hands together over the tail it would flatten that way? And these triangular plates are they scale-like or bigger, like actual plates?

"My dorsal tubes though, those sit below and climb just above my shoulders, and those deflate"- I'm lost here. I didn't feel like opening up a dictionary to look up what a "dorsal tube" is, but now I’m just picturing some kind of tubing going down his back starting from his shoulders. As I continue to read, they are dismissed from my mind.

“AHHHHHHH!” he screams. “He broke my hand!”

Reflexively, I try to bring my hand up to rub my snout, but it’s tied down too tightly. “Fool, you tried to slap me on the nose. You’re a creature with soft outer flesh. What did you expect would happen?” - Ok, more confirmation that he is covered all over with this exoskeleton.

Because of another sci-fi, space opera book series I have read where one of the characters was a very praying mantis/humanoid being, this is what I am picturing. I see our hero as a literal (forgive me) walking, talking cockroach. Imagine when Beetlejuice turns himself into a roach and waves at Winona Ryder "hello". Her is my image of our hero. I have totally forgotten about the dorsal tubes, the hands, feet, and tail. I just see a large insect-man.

Ok, because of the image of the hero I am having (which kind of later morphs into a "creature of the Black Lagoon), I am not attracted to him at all. I have no idea what his mouth looks like, and having just got done reading "The Pet" series books two and three, I am stuck with that weird side of the mouth fringe dealie the aliens in that book have, that totally squick out the humans. The "Pet" series does not have any alien/human sexual attractions, so having them be completely incompatible to humans isn't a problem. I have read the "Alien Abduction" books one and two from Amanda, and liked them. She put a general picture of the alien on the covers, and these aliens are all "Alpha" types, so they were more attractive.

Ok, this review is getting a bit too long, but I spent all this time trying to put my reasoning why the book was given three stars when normally I give 4 or 5 for Amanda.

The hero. He is an over the top germaphobe and has histrionics at every turn in the book. Amanda wrote that she modeled his character after "Niles" from "Frasier", "Sheldon" from "The Big Bang Theory", and a couple of other fussy-type characters. I'm sorry, but this wasn't endearing our hero to me.

Our heroine (a regular kind of gal who was also kidnapped alongside our hero, and was set free by him after the kidnappers were conveniently dispatched through stupidity) is the "hero" in the book because she is the one who gets him to do things that he is totally freaking out over. They are stranded on some alien planet (that is apparently colonized by humans) and are kind of in the boonies so they have some long trekking to do to get to civilization. There are a lot of scenes that would be comical if they weren't overshadowed by the fact that I am not at all attracted to the hero, and not at all liking his over-the-top histrionics. Because of this, I skimmed a lot.

There was no real story. Just the two of them trekking through the jungles and wilds of an alien planet - they were both taken from their respective planets to get to civilization. A very "Romancing the Stone" feel. We have no idea why these two were captured, who captured them, and what were the plans. The heroine kind of glossed over this. Also, the heroine, once released from her cage by the hero starts looking around for money, and finds a big bag of it. How did she know it was there, and where did it come from? The kidnappers were coming across as very Alabama-backwater-hick, so this left me wondering. Since our kidnappers were conveniently exploded into fine mist (idiot lit a cigarette near exposed gas) there are no keys to any aircraft or anything helpful to get out protagonists out of there.

Since I know this is supposed to be a romance, and at only a hundred pages or so, there has to be some progression pretty early on, and I accept that. I guess for me this book was a miss because of the whole histrionics the hero displayed because of every possible imagining he has of being bombarded by any kind of germ or pathogen when all there are is chipmunks, rock algae and apples. It was too much and it was a turn-off. Also, the confusing visual descriptions of the hero made it hard to really picture him in any kind of way that would be sexually compatible for our heroine. That was a hard part for me. Picturing their sexual compatibility. Whatever.

This was just a miss for me, but I adore Amanda because she is so very sweet at the ends of her books. She is very effusive and thankful about our buying/renting her books, much more so than other authors. She gives a bit of information about the science or inspirations that lead to the aliens in her books, she even gives book and author ideas for "How to Handle a Hangover" for book hangovers. I looked forward to reading these when normally I would skip all that end-of-the-book part and just get to the end where I can rate it and have it hit on Goodreads. I read on a Kindle Paperwhite and have Kindle Unlimited, so when I am able to read a book for "free" it isn't such a problem if I don't care for it as much as I hoped.

I will continue to read Amanda Milo, maybe I will revisit her "Alien Abductions" series that I kind of stopped reading after the second book.

Honestly, I don't recommend this book, but I do recommend her "Pet" series and her "Alien Abduction" series.

Amanda, if you see this, I hope you understand my reasoning, and please in the future, try and be a bit more specific in your aliens so I am not quite picturing insects. You did very good by letting us know that you used a "Face hugger" from "Alien" as part of the anatomy in another book, it would have been nice to picture a more attractive hero.
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Signalé
Library_Breeder | 2 autres critiques | Apr 28, 2023 |
An easy book to read once you get into the mindset that this is a standard alien abduction romance.

Alison is an everyday Jane who wakes up learning she has been abducted and sent to auction at an alien planet. After being purchased and just before she is about to be raped by insectoid looking aliens she is screaming out and is heard by Torhuk who comes to save her.

After saving Alison Torhuk thinks she is a breed of alien that his race is meant to protect with their lives. So, he does. All the while fighting is urge to bond with her (since he is meant to guard and not bond with this race).

The standards alien/human romance tropes abound. The communication problems, the need to protect at all costs the human by the alien hero, and of course you have the aliens discovery of sex that is phenomenal as compared to the others of his race.

It was surprising though that the heroine wasn't TSTL and didn't spend the whole book resisting any attraction to the hero. She also didn't spend the book crying and whining to go back to earth. She basically took stock of her situation and made the best of it. Also, I was surprised that there wasn't a lot of graphic sex. There were no overly descriptive accounts of weird alien body parts and how they are much better and different or larger than humans. There are actually fade to black scenes.

Also, this story went on past what I thought would be the ending. Not that it was too long or ended past where it should, but once the main struggles were over, I thought the story would be done. However it continued into a new arc that set the stage for the rest of the series.

It reminded me of that reality show "The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team" where for the first few series the show focused on the process of trying out and continually rehearsing and practicing until the total girls trying out for the team get worked down to the remaining members who are finally selected to become permanent members. However, once these girls are finally chosen the season ends. You don't see them go through actually being a cheerleader, you just see how they got there. A few seasons in the producers decided to continue past that and film through the first football season. So now you have the girls making the team and then you see their life as a cheerleader. Long analogy for this book, but I thought that it would be over once the couple had overcome their problems and struggles and it would be over, but it wasn't you got to read about their life afterwards.

Anyway it was a good book, but I probably won't read it again. However, I did read the next in the series - which I will write up a review for later.
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Signalé
Library_Breeder | 6 autres critiques | Apr 28, 2023 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
24
Membres
266
Popularité
#86,736
Évaluation
½ 3.7
Critiques
30
ISBN
8
Langues
1
Favoris
1

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