Barbarian Mine

The book is the fourth volume of the «Ice Planet Barbarians» series and opens with a short recap of earlier volumes. Human women abducted from Earth are held in an alien ship's cage; after an escape the ship crash-lands on an icy planet called Not-Hoth. There the women meet the tribe of large, blue, horned sa-khui. Every sa-khui has a symbiotic being called a «khui» in the chest: one without it falls ill from the air and dies within a week. When a compatible mate is found the khui sings a song in the chest called «resonance», which leads to mating.

Chapter 1 begins in Harlow's voice. She is a woman from Houston who, on Earth, was preparing for chemotherapy for an inoperable brain tumour. Now she has woken from a tube on an alien planet; according to the ship's medical computer she no longer has cancer. At present she is cutting soft «pink» trees to make a travois, a drag-sled, to help two wounded sa-khui, Aehako and Haeden. Her friend Kira has been taken to the ship. Harlow is human-sized; on this planet everything is «a bit too big» for her.

While cutting trees Harlow hears the crunch of snow behind her. Someone is near. She takes a blow to the back of the head and passes out. The attacker is an alien, a lone sa-khui: Rukh. From Rukh's voice we read that he lost his father when little and has lived alone since; he has forgotten many words. For several days he has been tracking two furred beings travelling with the «bad ones»; the orange-red «mane» of one has enchanted him.

Rukh carries Harlow to his cave. When he sees she is a «female» he is amazed: her body seems «pleasant» to him and he does not know what that means. He binds the wound on Harlow's head with a medicinal herb and says «this female is mine now, I will kill anything that tries to take her». Rukh's thinking is simple and possessive, but he tries not to hurt the woman.

When Harlow wakes her head aches and she hears the song of «resonance» in her chest. She understands that her khui has «chosen» her to mate with a man she does not know. In the cave a crouched, naked, dirt-covered sa-khui sits sharpening a knife. Harlow addresses him in English and in the old sa-khui tongue and gets no reply. She asks about Aehako and Haeden. The man is silent. Harlow snatches the knife and tries to run; Rukh catches her in the snow, her tunic comes undone, and from the eyes of the man looking at her chest Harlow understands what may happen. Between fear and attraction she says «No».

• The story is told in alternating chapters by Harlow and Rukh, in first person present tense
• Language learning and words rendered as heard in the garbled dialogue («Dunwannagohbak», «Lemmegoh») are the comic side of the romance
• There are many sex scenes and physical descriptions, and the coarse word choices get heavier still in the Turkish translation
• Between chapters there are short section breaks marked «- - -», and at the end come the author's note and advertisements for other books in the series
• The main plot line is simple: meeting, closeness, pregnancy, risk, return to the tribe and the forming of a family