Taken to Voraxia by Elizabeth Stephens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Miari
Taken to Voraxia
Here’s what I know: aliens invade our colony every three years, hunt and claim the most beautiful of our women, then leave. Here’s what I don’t know: why the king of them is here this time, and why his black, glittering eyes are trained on me.
A hybrid with red alien skin and brown human eyes, I’m not pretty. I’ve got no family and no plans to ever have one – least of all with this monster of a male. I’m an inventor, a mechanic, a tinkerer. The alien king wants me for reasons I can only guess at, but I’m not about to be taken for a slave and his response to me is something I know I can engineer my way out of.
He plans to come back for me when I’m of age, but he’ll have to find me first. Our little colony is a scary, desperate place and I’m less afraid to face it, than to face him or the strange, alien sensations he stirs…
Raku
She is my Xiveri mate, yet she runs from me – straight into the horrors of her small, savage moon colony. Slaughtering in her defense is easy, while gaining her trust will be the true challenge.
She fears my kind and the horrors my treacherous general has inflicted on her humans. Does she not know that it is my blood rite to keep her safe against him and his even more dangerous off-world allies? No, she thinks herself my slave and in place of acceptance, offers me only pacts and bargains. Shamed by her pacts, I still take them all gluttonously, because though she knows only hate, I know only need.
Eventually, we will need more than just these pacts between us if I am to convince her that she is my Xiveri mate and if she is to take her place at my side, not as my slave, but as Voraxia’s queen.
A whole new world!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Romance: 💚🖤💙❤️💜
Heat: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 😒😚🥲😍
The heroine: Miari – she is a mechanic and an inventor. She speaks out against the aliens who invade their planet each rotation (three years). Every time they invade, all the females between 7 and 15 rotations old have to kneel naked when the ship lands and the aliens disembark, those chosen by an alien are hunted for breeding purposes. It all happens again each rotation. Miari is not yet of age until the next rotation. Though she feels she would not be chosen anyway, since she is a half-breed of the hunt and her mother died giving birth.
The Hero: Raku – he is the Raku (King) of Voraxia. He has decided to see what his General Boraku has been doing each rotation when he and his men go off to one of the small colony planets that is so unremarkable it has no name. He is surprised to find that the colonists are fearful of him and have no basic necessities, such as translators.
The Story: Raku sees Miari and knows immediately she is his Xiveri mate. He is astounded to see that she couldn’t understand him and is afraid of him. Miari’s friend Svera had learned the language and is able to translate but they don’t understand what a Xiveri mat is. All they know is that in the next rotation when Miari is of age, Raku will return for her and will take her off world.
Miari and her friend Kiki run during the next rotation at the time the Voraxians are set to return. Kiki was already of age during the last few rotations and due to her beauty was the one chosen by the evil Boraku. She no longer speaks due to what she went through. They take to the sewers and break through to a cave that goes outside the Drolax dome that keeps the humans safe from the creatures that roam the rest of the planet. They end up regretting their actions.
This book introduced Va’Raku who also found his Xiveri mate in Kiki and Miari’s friend Svera who helped Miari when she ran away and was taken aboard Raku’s ship to a warrior named Krisxox. This all sets up the second and fourth books in the series and the couples involved in those books.
I don’t want to go into more of the plot but to say this is another alien romance that is unique in it’s storyline. Not only is the heroine a human/alien hybrid, but they are not from earth. The book is told in dual points of view by duet narration, which I was surprised and delighted with. Narration was done by Benjamin Charles and Blaire LeBlanc. I don’t believe I have ever heard these two before but they do a great job. Blaire has a soft voice with a pleasing tone and Benjamin has a deep voice which works well for Raku.
One thing I did not like about this one was the fact that so many foreign words were used. I know it is genuine that there would be language differences between alien races as well as foreign concepts that would need their own words. However, you would think once they have translators, most words would be the same. It just got a bit distracting for me.
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