This book was interesting to say the least. The first 10 to 15 pages in this book had me questioning life decisions. I picked up this book because it was super hyped and I loved the cover’s redesign. The cover art felt like a perfect blend between retro and modern day sci-fi covers. As someone who frequently reads romance, I’ve mainly picked up contemporary romance or paranormal/fantasy romance. So I was pretty excited to pick up “Ice Planet Barbarians” and finally step into the genre of sci-fi romance.
This book follows our main character Georgie who gets abducted by an alien spaceship and then crash lands on an icy planet with her fellow abductees. In an attempt to save her fellow abductees, she decides to leave the safe space of the space ship and enter into the frozen planet to search for help. That’s when she runs into the love interest, Vektal the big blue alien.
I honestly don’t know how to rate this book. This book is very entertaining and it did it’s job as a steamy romance. the writing though was just too much for me to ignore. I also know how annoying it is when reviewers complain that a book isn’t realistic enough when they’re reading about a human and alien romance but there are some things that can be realistic.
I usually like to list off the good parts of the book first and then end with the bad but I feel like I need to switch it around for this review or you guys are going to think that I hated this book.
While the writing did bother me, I really did actually enjoy this book. I basically read it in a day and it was such a good pick me up. I loved reading about Georgie and especially Vektal but I hated the parts when Georgie was interacting with her fellow abductees as a whole. When I thought more about how the scenes just got bad when Georgie was with the other humans I realized that it wasn’t the group of people who were creating my problems, it was LIZZIE.
My main problem with this book is Lizzie. I’ve never hated a character more in my life than this girl. All the issues I had with the book, whether it be the writing, the cringe phrases, or the unrealistic responses of life threatening situations, they were all a product of her presence.
Take for example the writing and the weird phrasing.
I mentioned this in my weekend reading post but the writing was a bit too cringe for me. Again, everyone has their own definition of cringe but certain phrases in this book definitely rang the cringe bell for me. There were phrases such as “silly Susan” which is kind of out of place but reasonable enough but then you get phrases like “billy the badass” that had me calling my friend screaming, “uh is this real??”. There was just a lot of weird phrasing that felt so jarring and out of place.
As for the unrealistic situations, I’m aware that the entirety of this book is unrealistic and I didn’t have a problem with it. But Lizzie’s character was so tooth achingly, nauseatingly, preppy in situations where everyone almost died and honestly I think in one of the scenes, someone actually did die. Their ship literally crashed, they’re surrounded by feces, and they’re stranded on an icy planet and this girl started to call out people and went as far as telling this other female character to shut up because she’s being a “negative Nancy”. The “negative Nancy” was giving basic comments that are so pertinent and relative to the harrowing situation they’re in and ugh… I just CANNOT.
For someone who’s so preppy and hates negative people, all this character does is complain. She’s literally guilt tripping people and getting annoyed at people who are scared, people who have gone through traumatic things.
My favorite thing about this book is hands down Vektal.
He was so innocent, and so pure but also at the same time, can be very dangerous and protective. His little nickname and mispronunciation of Georgie’s name was the most adorable thing ever. It was interesting to read a romance where there’s a language barrier. It made the relationship far more interesting, especially when it came to Vektal try to show his love in very non-human ways. Another thing I liked about this book is how Georgie stood to her beliefs and morals in situations. For someone who was just recently abducted, I appreciated how she based her decisions and actions on what the group as a whole would be comfortable with.
As a history nerd, I found it very interesting to see Vektal’s people and how they survived on this icy planet. You can draw many similarities to early human civilizations which consisted of cave dwelling hunter-gathers. It felt pretty cool knowing how with the addition of a couple thousand of years, how drastically that cave living lifestyle is going to change with the introduction of better technology, domestication, and science.
If you’re looking for a fun romance book to get lost in I suggest picking this book up! I know I harped on about the writing but honestly, there were only a couple of scenes in the beginning and towards the end of the book that left me scratching my head. A good chunk of this book is just about Georgie and Vektal and watching their relationship develop and flourish.