Review: The Corsair’s Captive by Ruby Dixon (2017)

Corsairs, Book 1

Ok, so here’s the deal. This is going to be uncomfortable, and I’m sorry, but we’ll get through it together.

I read this book when this blog was just a glimmer in our eyes to see if I could really read anything and keep my review impartial and productive. I SWEAR. Just so you know, of the three of us I’m the most buttoned-up and I have been known to thumb past steamy scenes to get back to the plot, especially in romantic suspense/adventure (“…ugh…guys, this is not the time for this nonsense…”), which this book absolutely is.

Basically, a human woman gets abducted and then rescued by a ship of misfit aliens who are blue, scaly, huge, have horns and tails, and are also pirates. Because, why not. If you liked Han Solo but also kind of liked Chewbacca and didn’t really know how that made you feel, you’re in luck.

Here’s what the book did well–Ruby Dixon does not stink at creating characters who connect with each other. The ship’s cast of misfit aliens in the first book easily lead you into the rest of the series, and you’ll end up reading them all. You just will. So be kind to yourself and dig right in, because when you’re done you might need to carve out some time for self-reflection.

Look, there’s no getting past it–the steamy scenes in this book get weird. There’s nothing like fully supporting two characters while they feel each other up only to have one stroke the other’s tail. Or have one admire the other’s yellow, cat-like eyes. And I’m sorry to be explicit here, but the author doesn’t make it easy on you by having the one really critical part of alien anatomy translate directly from the human experience. I’m not going to tell you what’s different because like I said, I’m the buttoned up one here, but it’s different. Okay? It’s just different.

There are other things I had a hard time with (that didn’t involve interspecies…intimacy…). For example, you have a human abducted by aliens and “desperate” to go home but she doesn’t actually seem like a human you’d identify with under those circumstances. Seriously, I can’t even walk away from a pair of socks that have holes in them so I don’t get just blowing off a whole planet for a guy. But again–this was my first foray into outer space smut, so this might not be an issue for some people.The author doesn’t get into anything deep involving her life on earth, which does make it easier to forget she had one there.

All in all, if you’re in a smut rut and you need to shake things up, you could do much worse–and maybe no better–than The Corsair’s Captive. It’s a stretch, it’s weird, it’ll make you very uncomfortable, but since real life is often all of those things without half the fun this book ends up being, you might as well try it.

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