Rescued by the Alien Pirate (Mates of the Kilgari #1)

Hmmm…here we go. The good stuff: this story involves hunky, chiseled, hot alien guys, some rescued beautiful women, and some interesting secondary characters that will likely show up in subsequent installments of this possible series. The bad stuff: there are major dialogue problems in this story that distract from both the plot and the characters. The hunky, chiseled, hot alien guys speak using American idioms and slang, despite the fact that they’ve stated several times they’ve never seen humans before, and they are hella gone from any human settlements. One of them refers to a female engineer type as a “grease monkey.” Another one yells for the ladies to “pipe down” and compliments another lady with “she seems to know her way around a wrench.” The beautiful, rescued females display childish behavior at every turn, including literally no gratitude for the rescue from certain death. They also tend to use American idioms and slang from 1,000 yrs ago, such as “keister.” Other seriously outdated phrases include “grab some shuteye,” “saved our bacon,” and my personal fave, “said the spider to the fly.” While this may seem petty to point out, this really outdated/canned dialogue distracts from the story. It\’s hard to feel you\’re in a scifi universe when the characters talk like they\’re in a 1950s American sitcom. The H, who I soon began to think of as Captain Stubing (if you want to make this a drinking game, take a shot whenever you think Love Boat), is a nice sorta piratey dude who has horns. Not sure of what he looks like as I never saw a description beyond “golden skinned” “horned” and “cat like.” He also has more than one love wand, but this still doesn’t give you much of a picture. Use your imagination, I guess. He spends a lot of time arguing with the h and wondering if she’s his fated mate. He also tolerates a tremendous amount of whining, fussing, complaining and other stereotyped girl child behavior from the ungracious, ungrateful ladies. At the same time, he seems to struggle with some pretty clear issues such as where all the new people will sleep, household items like blankets, and oh, maybe the need to get these ungrateful girls to lend a hand here and there. He’s a hit in the bedroom, though, with a goodly amount of attention to personal girl detail. Unfortunately, he kills some of that hotness for me saying things like “You’re one of a kind,” and “Where have you been all my life?” Back it up, Sinatra! The h, however, was too busy being stereotyped as a teen with an attitude problem. She was really not likeable, even if you figured in shock, fear, and confusion. Her behavior in the bedroom was also a bit puzzling, as she did a lot of screamin’, and displayed some seriously rough behavior towards that hot alien H that I didn’t get at all. She also later noted that “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” which I don’t recall ever hearing even my grandmother say. Lots of dialogue issues here. Oh, and bonus—in the future, when we are all smarter, cleaner, less trash producing and maybe more altruistic, there’s a program some of the rescue girls like to watch called “As the Galaxy Churns.” So, there’s that to look forward to, which is nice. As a sweet FU to the readers, it ends on a small cliffhanger, with issues on the very last page about the remaining rescues girls in cryo tubes and some melt down in the medical bay. Most authors know that readers hate hate hate cliffhangers. But hey, we get one anyway! I’m unsure of what’s up with Celia Kyle. She’s written some terrific books, but this isn’t one of them.

I should have added wine. Or Whine. The wine because the main couple finally has sex only after they break open a bottle of wine, both times. No sober sex for them. Anyway, I quite like Athena Storm\’s wild and bizarre outerspace saga about all kinds of weird aliens insolos and groups and whatever else all trying to take each other over or escape from others, etc etc. This was a hot mess. Ignoring the hot mess part, the two main characters bitched, complained, whined, cringed, changed their minds, and were the most incompetent beings I would want in charge of my life. I kid you not the \”captain\” of your 107 woman group (only about 30 awake) doesn\’t know your name or what you can offer to keep you and your group alive and welcome on the privateer (its a freaking pirate ship bitches) that found you then disassembled your kidnap ship for the goodies so they got their payment a 1000x! Anyway, the heroine is so supposedly naive that she hasn\’t thought about anyone buttering up the pirates through sex to not push them out an airlock or just sell the women into slavery. Because that is the Athena-verse books I am used to reading. Ok. Enough. Terrible main characters, complaining and yelling at each other until they have sex like at 75%, then at 85% we are supposed to remember they have been fated mates since the beginning … all fated mates treat each other like dog ¥hit, am I right? There\’s plenty of other potential matches because fated mates for these men are determined by a kiss and these women are all tender innocent virgins who would rather die than be briefly smooched on the lips – aww I\’m just joking you, there isn\’t one woman who wouldn\’t get in line to rule out or in, but the authors got the readers believing the virgin special spaceship. So ??

Oh man, this book is darn near unreadable. It appears that the author was going for a more realistic style than your average ista-love and devotion romance but the h is just bitchy and demanding while the H is kind of an ass. Characters don\’t need to be perfect but so far their only shared redeeming quality is that they care about their subordinates. At 47٪ and nothing even remotely romance progressing has happened. They just have a laundry list of problems and bickering. Of course you need conflict in a story but this is nothing but. I came here to escape reality not be burdened with the bickering of the main characters. I almost always finish novels and have a pretty low bar for alien romance but jinkies. I don\’t think I can finish and realized I am actually forcing myself to soldier on. Hard pass guys. It is well written but the content is so meh. I kept checking in, reading to see if anything good has happened yet but nope.

I love how the salvage ship became the love boat. It’s actually really amazing considering the way the ladies are really demanding and waspish in the beginning. I really enjoyed the way Varia struggles with what she knows is true and what she wants to be true. The authors did a fantastic job of creating this new world and the characters just seemed like they naturally fell into their correct places within it. As you read you can see where more and more connections are being made. Hopefully this means many more books by this writing duo. I can’t wait to see which couple we get to read about next.

Varia woke up from cryostasis as a prisoner but she has no idea what she did to become one. It appears that she is not alone in there as they are a hundred other women and they also have no idea what they did and why they are there. Even worse, they appear to be in a dark and dirty cargo hold on a spaceship. Then out of the darkness comes someone to rescue them in the form of a horned and golden-skinned alien called Solair. He gives them food, shelter and the promise of safety – in return, it appears he wants Varia. However, it appears that the people who took the women want them back, and they are powerful so the only thing stopping them is Solair. Seems what he wants he keeps – and that now includes Varia. Will everything work out for them all? The summary of this book read really well, but I have to be honest and say I struggled with it. Varia was such a moaner and never satisfied that it soon became very boring and I started to switch off. There were still good elements of the story with the exchange of information about the Kilgari race and the explanation of the whole mate concept, but the constant moaning was just too much in between all of that interesting content. I don\’t think I will be reading any more in this series every though Celia Kyle is an author.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member