Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby DixonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Ice Planet Barbarians is a decent bit of sci-fi smut soured by some of its thematic choices. Dixon well understands what her readers want and delivers. The plot moves briskly and with enough interest that the narrative could probably stand on its own. The smut carries just the right amount of spice. Dixon avoids the genre pitfall of an author's need to re-name body parts with cringe-inducing purple prose. However. The book feels oddly tradwife. Georgie our protagonist is a sassy independent woman who learns to find contentment in forced domesticity. She is utterly and completely taken care of, yes, but is raped to start (even if the book chooses not to call it that) and then made pregnant against her will. Her only real agency is to choose between life with her barbarian or death. Is that really a choice? It doesn't help that the titular barbarians feel like old fetishizations of indigenous and people of color: big and exotic and burly and barely literate. If forced consent is your kink, then go to town, I guess, but despite decent genre writing, Dixon misses.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment