Ice Planet Barbarians

Ice Planet Barbarians is much better at the human part than its giant blue alien pitch has any right to be.

I went in ready to admire the nerve of the title from a safe distance. I came out caring whether a group of stranded women had shelter and whether a man who believes fate has chosen his mate could understand that she still gets a vote. Ruby Dixon sold me on the weather first. The romance had to earn its blanket.

That is the secret of this book's charm. Its premise is gloriously daft, its emotional question is rather serious, and it moves fast enough that I was rarely inclined to ask how the plumbing works. I would hand it to a sceptic with a straight face, then leave before they could ask what I had handed them.

The premise (no spoilers past Georgie's walk into the snow)

Georgie Carruthers is among the human women abducted by aliens and left on a frozen planet when the ship runs into trouble. She becomes the group's unofficial leader and goes out into the cold to find help. There she meets Vektal, a large, horned blue alien whose chest begins to purr in her presence. He says she is his mate. He can help the women survive. Georgie has excellent reasons to care about the first proposition and hesitate over the second.

This is the first Ice Planet Barbarians book. The story first appeared in 2015; the expanded Berkley print edition was published in 2021. That edition matters if you are checking content notes, since editions of this opening book differ. I am keeping the plot here at the point where survival and attraction first collide.

What works

Dixon gives Georgie a task before she gives her a love interest. It is a small structural choice with an enormous effect. The woman crossing the snow is trying to get the others out of danger. Attraction has to arrive in the middle of that obligation, so the romance cannot simply sweep the crisis off the table. Every tender advance carries a practical question: does this help Georgie, and does it help the women who depend on her?

The sentences favour momentum over ornament. Georgie's practical voice cuts through material that could become solemn very quickly. The weather creates an actual limit on choices; the early chapters do not have to manufacture reasons for these people to stay near one another. I do wish the wider setting had more texture beyond its usefulness as a lethal freezer. But as a pressure cooker for a first couple, the cold is doing honest work.

Vektal is the other reason the book functions. He is the leader of his people, and the biological response that marks Georgie as his mate is certainty to him before it can mean anything to her. Dixon could have let that certainty win the argument by itself. Instead, the more interesting movement is his gradual need to take Georgie's choices seriously. Fate is easy. Listening requires a plot. He is at his most appealing when his power is useful to someone besides himself.

The premise also lets Dixon turn a familiar romance fantasy sideways. Being wanted without reserve sounds lovely until you remember that Georgie did not choose the planet, the danger, or the rules of this courtship. The book is sharpest when her suspicion interrupts his confidence. I found myself rooting for the interruptions. Without them this would be a very warm story about a very cold place and very little else.

What's polarising

The tonal jump is steep. An abduction and a desperate survival problem sit next to a romance that wants to be funny, sexy and comforting. Some readers will experience that as relief. Others will find that the book changes emotional temperature before they have recovered from its opening. Both reactions make sense. A quip cannot shovel the trauma out of the doorway.

The mate bond will split the room too. It offers instant intensity, but it can make the romance feel as though the conclusion has been filed before Georgie has had time to argue. Dixon does put her resistance on the page; I still wanted more space between the biological declaration and the emotional trust it is supposed to promise. The shortest route to intimacy is not always the most persuasive one.

Nor is this intricate science fiction. The cold, the alien community and the physical bond are built primarily to serve the couple and the next story. If you want a slow investigation of a new civilisation, you may start drawing diagrams the book has no intention of filling in. I did not mind its priorities. I would have minded if it had pretended they were different.

The Vektal of it

Vektal's appeal is gloriously unsubtle. He has survival knowledge, status among his people and a powerful conviction that Georgie belongs with him. That combination is a fantasy with a sizeable warning label attached. The best thing Dixon does is allow Georgie to be unimpressed by certainty when she needs answers, food and safety.

His purring is an excellent romance device because it tells on him before he can compose a speech. His body broadcasts what he wants; Georgie's job is to decide what she wants. The difference matters. I am fond of a devoted hero, but devotion that cannot hear no is just entitlement in a nicer coat. The book comes alive whenever those two meanings of devotion pull against each other.

Spice and heat

Heat: 4 of 5, explicit open door. Romance.io rates the book four of five for steam, and that matches the reading experience: the sexual content is a major part of the romance, not a discreet reward after the adventure. If you prefer longing to stay on the other side of a closed door, this is the wrong cave.

Content note: alien abduction, captivity and coercion are part of the setup. Consent is an issue inside the romantic premise, not merely a decorative bit of danger. Earlier editions contain an on-page sexual assault of a captive by an abductor. The 2021 print text removes that depiction but still implies assault, so check the edition if that material is a hard limit for you. The comedy and tenderness do not erase the opening's darkness.

Who it's for

Read this if you can accept a biologically determined match as the start of an argument rather than proof that the argument is over. You want an alien hero whose usefulness is as attractive as his size, a heroine with responsibilities outside the romance, and prose that knows when to get out of the way. You are willing to take a title literally and a courtship sceptically.

Leave it for another mood if captivity in the opening will sour the entire book for you, or if the idea of fate doing any of the romantic heavy lifting makes you want to give the characters a consent form and a lift home. That is a perfectly sensible instinct. It would, however, be a short novel.

Books like Ice Planet Barbarians

• Choosing Theo by Victoria Aveline, for another human woman navigating alien rules while insisting that choosing still means something.
• Strange Love by Ann Aguirre, for an abduction premise that finds tenderness in a truly alien connection.
• The E.T. Guy by V.C. Lancaster, for the less familiar, more earthbound route to an alien romance built on awkward differences.

Finished the book and not ready to leave? Vektal is waiting on Fictora.

Talk to Vektal