Book Review: "Ice Planet Barbarians" by Ruby Dixon

Well, umm, this was interesting.

If ever there were a "Bookstagram Made Me Do It" book, it would be Ice Planet Barbarians. And now I can say that I was yesterday years old when I read my first piece of alien erotica.

Georgie often has weird dreams after a long day of work. But when she dreams of being abducted by aliens, it turns out it’s not a dream at all. She’s being held captive on an alien ship with a number of other young women, enduring harsh conditions and living in fear that they’ll be raped if they make a sound.

When the ship has engine trouble, their crew leaves its human cargo on an ice planet. Georgie, who is the de facto leader of the women, goes off to find shelter and food. But what she finds is Vektal, a 7-foot-tall blue alien who is immediately taken with her. He doesn’t know what she is, but she makes his chest purr, and he believes she is his mate. And he’s willing to show her just how taken with her he is.

Vektal agrees to help Georgie by helping the other women from the ship. But what will he want in return? And will he be willing to let her go?

The steam in this book is off the charts and the story is surprisingly funny at times. I don’t think I’ll read the rest of the series but this was one I won’t soon forget!

Book Review: "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir

Andy Weir's latest book, Project Hail Mary, blinded me with science.

I've been waiting to read this for a few months now, since I really enjoyed The Martian. So many friends have raved about it, and the book has appeared on a number of friends' year-end lists.

A man wakes up on a spaceship. He can’t remember his name or his mission, and somehow he’s the only one on the spaceship who survived. What happened? What’s his mission?

Little by little, it comes back to him. He’s Ryland Grace, a science teacher, and he was drafted into a multinational effort to save the world from a being that threatens the existence of humanity. He’s been asleep for a long time, and the window for him to act is rapidly closing.

It’ll take all of his scientific bravado plus help from one of the most unlikely of sources to save humanity. Will he prevail? Can the threat to our world be stopped?

Andy Weir is an excellent storyteller. This is definitely a story with heart and emotion and, of course, you’re hopefully rooting for Ryland to save the day. The thing is, however, this book has so much science that it made my head hurt.

Sure, you can skim some of it and some of it you can figure out, but after a while it just reminded me that there’s a reason I didn’t go to medical school and become a doctor, thus contradicting the requirement in the Torah that the oldest Jewish son practice medicine. (I kid.)

Book Review: "Armada" by Ernest Cline

"Ever since the first day of kindergarten, I had been hoping and waiting for some mind-blowingly fantastic, world-altering event to finally shatter the endless monotony of my public education. I had spent hundreds of hours gazing out at the calm, conquered suburban landscape surrounding my school, silently yearning for the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse, a freak accident that would give me super powers, or perhaps the sudden appearance of a band of time-traveling kleptomaniac dwarves."

Even though Zack Lightman wants his life to be more exciting, he definitely isn't ready for what's about to happen. Daydreaming one day in his high school class, he looks out to see what he thinks is an alien spaceship from Armada, his favorite video game. But given that he spends hours and hours playing the game with his friends, conducting "missions" on behalf of the so-called Earth Defense Alliance, and has risen to become one of the top 10 players of the game in the world, he starts to wonder if he's hallucinating, and maybe he should step back from the game a little bit.

And then the unthinkable happens. A space vehicle arrives at his high school and whisks Zack away to a top-secret location, where he learns that the planet really is in trouble, and is about to be attacked by the aliens he has always believed were fictional. But it's going to take more than soldiers to defend the planet—it's going to take the talents of skilled gamers like Zack from all over the world to save the fate of humanity. Is life imitating fiction, or has fiction been imitating life all this time?

Ernest Cline's first book, Ready Player One was pretty fantastic, and it was one of the best books I read in 2011, so I've been eagerly anticipating Cline's follow-up. Much like that book, Armada is chock full of references to 80s and 90s science fiction movies, video games, and pop culture. (It pains me to admit I had to Google some of those references. Don't judge.)

I thought this was a fun read, with a lot of heart and some surprising bursts of emotion. It really did feel at times like watching a big adventure movie like Independence Day—I felt exhilarated at times, at times I wondered what would happen, and I even felt myself tearing up a time or two. The plot took a while to really get traction, however, and there are places where there was a little too much detail that went over my head. But in the end, I love the way Cline writes, and I enjoyed this book, and look forward to seeing what's next for him...if there's another adventure to be a part of, count me in.