I think I got this book when I was going through a big Alpha/Beta/Omega phase on AO3, and I wanted to see if there were any published books with this same trope. I found this one when it was free, and decided to try it out for myself. I didn’t go into it expecting much, and I guess I got what I asked for.
Carter is the only human on a planet where bug aliens have enslaved a bunch of other aliens. He can’t survive the same way the alien creatures survive, and no one is looking for him anymore. Pykh and Siel are aliens who have been enslaved for many years, and are his cage mates. They seem to be in some kind of relationship, and they keep looking towards him to join them. Now he has to make a decision on whether to join their relationship and be cared for, or to continue his training of not giving any human traits to aliens.
This book is told both from the perspectives of Pykh, Siel, and Carter. This allows you to see the alien perspective of planet and the human soldier perspective of the planet at the same time. Carter couldn’t understand the alien captors or cage mates, so most of his plot is stumbling through the world trying to figure out what people are saying. Pykh can understand their captors a little bit, Siel cannot at all, but they can understand each other. Their main confusion is trying to understand their new Omega.
By the way, this is definitely not an Alpha/Beta/Omega romance. Carter is just…..small? He’s smaller than the aliens, so they just immediately say that he is their Omega. I doubt that there is anything in his body that will make him able to carry their children. Which was the whole point of Omegas as far as I knew. An omega was spoiled and loved because they brought life to the pack/group.
The sex scenes in this book felt gross to me. I’ve read wolf books that have sex, kraken books that have sex, vampire books that have sex, and this one just made me feel GROSS. It didn’t feel like Pykh and Siel had much chemistry, even though they were supposed to be an established couple. It just felt like they were having sex to blow off steam, which is fine I guess. But then when Carter was added into the fray, even though they didn’t have any full sex as a trio for the entire book, it just felt weird. I just started skimming those scenes as I just felt uncomfortable, and I’ve been reading bad fanfiction for years and I usually don’t do that.
It was also hard for me to visualize the scenes where this book was taking place. I am usually bad at visualizing, admittedly, but it just seemed extra hard in this book for me. In my mind, this entire book took place in some sort of giant box that had a cage section and a grassy green section. It was supposed to be an entire planet, but it never felt like it. Even when the characters were outside of their cages.
The only thing I did enjoy was hearing the alien Siel talking about his life outside of slavery. It was so rough for him to adjust, whereas Pykh was born into slavery and knew nothing else. This contrast between the characters made for very friendly and interesting banter between the two. I would like to see how these characters reacted if they were ever back on their own home planet at any point.
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this book. I might read the rest of the series for fun sometime later, as it is a short read. But I’m not jumping up to read it myself.
Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 books.
