Book five in the science fiction romance series Ice Planet Barbarians, BARBARIAN’S PRIZE by Ruby Dixon is an alternate world romance between a giant blue alien and a kidnapped Earth woman.  This was originally published as an eBook in 2016, and is now released as a paperback with an included Honeymoon Epilogue.  A group of women were captured by little green men and kept on a space ship awaiting sale on an extraterrestrial black market.  The alien ship crashed, dumping the women on wintery ice planet where there is a small tribe of sa-khui, a tribe of massive horned blue “barbarian” aliens.  Of course, these blue guys are quite sexy, just as you’d expect for aliens (wink). 

These colorful aliens have a symbiotic life form, khui, that allow them to live in the cold planet’s poisonous atmosphere.  The Earth women take on these symbionts too, for survival.  If the khui find a compatible pairing, the khui in each mate will resonate in the chest of their host and cause great sexual energy.  This is kind of fun to me, because first being stranded on an alien planet and then the symbiont who decides who you get to mate and makes you desperately turned on means that lots and lots of hot bedplay is essentially mandatory.  This allows the reader to not have to worry about the characters’ behaviors, and makes the books more of a romp. 

I do have to put a trigger warning on BARBARIAN’S PRIZE, though.  Tiffany was kidnapped by a different alien race and raped repeatedly before the kidnappers’ ship crashed on the icy planet when Tiffany meets her mate.  Quite rightfully so, Tiffany is dealing with a lot of trauma from this prolonged mental and physical abuse.  It’s almost impossible to give this issue the depth and nuance needed to accurately represent what anguish a person might be dealing with after rape in a short novel such as this one.  And, of course, for a romance, the sexytimes have to proceed as a decent clip throughout the book, which can be jarring to imagine for a rape survivor.  So your mileage may vary for this book, depending on whether you have your own trauma informing your response to Tiffany’s, and depending on how loosely you hold your expectations for a progression of sexual healing.  The author's note at the end of the book does address how she’s finally able to present a character dealing with the aftermath of the kidnapping and alien rape, which must be a daunting thing to contemplate as a writer?  Salukh is so patient and gentle with his mate Tiffany, contradicting the author’s characterization of the males as barbarians.  He’s definitely the best part of the book! 

BARBARIAN’S PRIZE by Ruby Dixon is an interesting dichotomy of a sci fi romance romp with the exploration of the effects of trauma from prior sexual abuse.  Readers happy to willingly suspend disbelief will enjoy this off-world romance with lots of drama and plenty of sizzle between Tiffany and Salukh.