God forbid a woman has hobbies (eg: removing evil grease inside men)

Vera is a girlboss with the kind of daddy AND mommy issues I can get behind. I would lie in court for her

A classic Kaitlyn O’Connor book, so I went in as is traditional for me—no blurb, no reviews, no warning. Straight into the madness.

This book did not hit. The romance was downright evil. Put these men in JAIL.

I’ve become convinced that the author does not know the difference between an intense breeding kink and romantic love. I submit into evidence this line from our heroine, after one (1) full conversation with the alien: “She thought it was sweet that he wanted to fuck her and make a baby—romantic, really.”

I suspect she writes alien romance mostly to excuse the heroes’ insane breeding kinks. Every alien species she comes up with is obsessed with impregnating their partners. Most of them don’t even see the point in having sex for pleasure. Those are aliens, so whatever, but her human heroes are ALSO like this. It’s frankly baffling. Even more baffling is the heroines’ typical reaction, which is to (1) respond happily to constant plowing with no wrapper and no foreplay, and (2) somehow equate all this caveman sex to love.

Which brings me to this particular novel. Before I get into the rest of the complaints, I’ll dump some of the iconic sex quotes I know we’re all expecting from a Kaitlyn O’Connor review: his essence flowed into her like a scalding tide and lit everything between her lips and her she-cave…and that immediately began to clamor for the hard log of flesh digging into her belly

he hoped to carry her to the summit. He’d just managed to surmount her tight little cave mouth

Connor switched from trying to chew on and suckle everything to a frantic search for the sheathe he was desperate to plunge his lance into

It was for damned certain his cock had scarcely relaxed. And every time the bastard leapt up, his balls filled with more seed and got heavier until the wind drag of them had begun to interfere with flight

he joined his body with hers and took her to a special place

Anyway, back to the bad part. The FMC, Belle, is part of a colony ship about to land on an alien planet. Immediately there’s some ick happening on the ship. The onboard population is required to reproduce, but only within a pool of people who are “genetic matches”. Obviously this engenders a culture of ultra-misogyny. One of Belle’s matches is the all-powerful military captain, Connor, who is ten years her senior and has never once looked her way. She’s fine with that.

The ship lands and they discover an alien population already in residence. They’re sexy blue flying natives, and they’re low on females. Belle immediately catches the interest of two blue aliens—not because of anything specific to her, she just happens to be the best womb around—but at least they are respectful about asking for her permission first. Belle would say no, but is interrupted by the captain erupting into an tantrum over someone else showing interest in his “match”, and he also immediately stakes a claim on her.

This makes Belle’s life unbelievably difficult. The human camp basically ostracizes her. She begs all the men involved to leave her alone, for her own safety, to no avail. So, out of options, she goes to the doctor and asks to get artificially inseminated from a random donor so that she can fulfill her obligation to reproduce and take herself out of the romantic running for the three dudes trying to ruin her life by planting their own baby in her.

Connor’s response is this: Maybe [the aliens] were trying to figure out a way to plant their seed before she had her garden planted and decided she didn’t need anyone. But he had access to the ship’s records—everything—including the med center’s files. And he was planning on hand-delivering his donation, by god! Since she’d so helpfully gone for a monitor so that he could pinpoint the timing. All he had to do was figure out a time, a place, and the right situation and that egg was his by god! Then he’d have squatter’s rights, damn it!

PUT HIM IN JAIL! NOW! BY GOD! (Yes, Kaitlyn loves her exclamation marks!)

We also find out that Connor’s been into Belle basically since she hit puberty, but stayed away until she was legal. (Ew.) But then two of her other matches horrifically assaulted her (and he had her memory of the incident wiped without her consent), at which point the captain figured it was… too late? To pursue her? I guess he didn’t want her anymore after that??? I have no idea if that’s supposed to read as respectful but the whole situation took me to ick-town, big time.

Of course Belle eventually changes her mind and decides that all this fighting over who gets to fill up her womb is terribly romantic and she’s in love with everyone involved. So I guess I’M the crazy one for thinking this is all fucked up.

Geopolitics, but make it horny.

Even at a surface level, this is a cool book full of fun facts written in an accessible way. But this book is so much more than that. What makes this a five star book is that the author organically weaves in discussions about ecological responsibility, disability, pitfalls of human scientific research, and anthropocentrism.

My own forum posts demonstrate how many interesting, often philosophical topics came up throughout the book:

• Epistemic humility and empathy
• Human vision and a socialized response to “seeing” certain species
• Pain research and bioethics
• Hydrodynamic navigation is cool
• Dune sandworms are real?
• Female Frog Rage
• Anthropocentric design and disturbances to others’ Umwelten

Yong didn’t need to use big words like epistemology, or even much scientific jargon. He is so good at breaking down complex (and perceptually foreign) concepts for a general audience. The writing is not only clear and thoughtfully organized, but also often beautiful and poignant. I highly recommend the audiobook (narrated by the author)—the cadence and tone are perfect and has great synergy with the prose. The book is so well-written that I want to reread a physical copy and highlight various passages.

My world feels richer and I feel more connected to other lives that roam the earth, all thanks to this book.