I’m torn about this one. I thought Sam’s backstory was great and the progression of her relationship with Sessah was solid, and I adore his growth into a lovely giant cinnamon roll.

So what didn’t I like? Pretty much the whole plot with them finding the escape pod holding Praxiian Kvasaht. Our two heroes handled that situation so stupidly right from the start that it was painful to read. Early in the book, it’s established that there is 1) not only a whole SYSTEM for contacting Ashtar if someone is out and needs help but that 2) HE IS GOING TO CHECK ON THEM at the fruit cave. Why don’t they wave him down and get him to bring the pod to Mardok?? Furthermore, when the Icehome people came on the slavers ship, Vektal etc were so paranoid about possibly being tracked and discovered, they set the whole damn ship to explode. Why is no one thinking there could be a tracker or a distress beacon on Kvasaht’s escape pod? Or his ankle monitor?? And now we’re just not telling anyone that anything ever happened? So when people show up looking for this guy, they’re going to be in for a fun surprise.

Honestly, I’m mostly skipping this one. I have no particular interest in Ariana or Zolaya from what we’ve seen of them as side characters, but I gave the first chapter a chance and… still have no interest. I think the anxiety factor is a solid story, and I think Dixon has handled it well in some of the Risdaverse books, but given that I don’t like Ariana much to begin with, she just comes across as whiny. And as a parent with chronic illness, I loved the little boy taking care of him mom… but then she’s concerned that his future spouse is going to steal him from her? It’s gross boy-mom territory, and hard pass, thanks.

This one was so solid. WILD turnaround with Skarr as a character, but it works. It seems similar to what she was trying to do with Callie’s Catastrophe, but here we actually DO end up liking the dick hero. And Vivi is great: the ex-goth, survivalist, introverted, dominant clone we didn’t know we needed. Finding out from the author’s note that Dixon had based the two of them originally on Andy & Allison from The Breakfast Club made so much sense in some ways.

So we finally get R’jaal’s book, a whole new series, and even more new characters! And it’s all great. R’jaal is lovely as you knew he would be, Rosalind is generally fun— the fanfic thing gets a bit overdone, and I say that AS A FANFIC WRITER (and no, we don’t all write mpreg

I had been blowing through the Icehome books and got to Ice Planet Clones, when I realized that I still had some IPB books to read. I honestly mostly do not care about the flashback stories, so I skipped a few and came straight to this one. Obviously I’ve been curious about Nora and Dagesh ever since we “overheard” their sexcapades way back when. I do love how their communication is handled, and the assertion of what Nora wants, while she still respects Dagesh’s boundaries is all extremely well done. Honestly, could have used more sexytimes though, and I’d love to see Dixon pull out some even kinkier characters. She keeps flirting with the line, I’m waiting for her to cross it for real. Oh and I hated the present day stuff. Ariana and her son are still driving me nuts and I do not care. For all that I love the way Dixon writes children in smaller doses, they tend to dominate the current IPB landscape in a way that’s just annoying.

*BREATHES* Holy crap. I just read almost the entire Ice Planet Barbarians/Risdaverse/everything adjacent series in a little over a month, and I’m finally done! (I did skip a few of the flashback novels and many of the slice of life novellas, plus I do still have Only the Clonely to pick up at some point, but PHEW.)

Onto this one though. God, I love the worldbuilding Dixon does in these books, and this one brings a whole new level to Not-Hoth with the expansion underground with the Remainders.

We’ve known Tia for a while now, and known how awful she can be, and while she’s not completely redeemed here, she’s grown a lot and it’s fun to read her as an unreliable narrator when she talks about events we’ve already seen.

This is another one where it takes people a dumb long time to come up with easy solutions, like using the Ancestor’s Ship to language dump for the new Remainders in Icehome, but at least in this one, they’ve had a lot going on. I do think that there could have been some more pushback to Rem’eb taking his dad’s throne, but I think we’ll see more of that going forward.

I’m hoping we get Kyth & Sabrina’s story next. I need to know why his khui keeps dying!