This is the third in Lovett's sex planet books (Planet of Desire is the correct series name) and I enjoyed it but not quite as much as the first two. Jenie is an alien herself, so it's her with a genetic mating bond to worry about for a change. She's convinced that penetrative sex is going to seal the deal, as it were, so she spends most of the book fighting both the sex planet toxin (read more about that here) and the mating bond.
Her mate? Koviye, who we meet in the first two books, a Fellamana with a special power. You don't need to have read these earlier installments, but they do explain the Fellamana culture and provide context for the central conflict in the book. Koviye's power, the exstare, is a sort of magical orgasm that the Fellamana believe must be shared equally among all of their people. They are a polyamorous civilization and everyone is convinced that they're incapable of monogamy. Kind of makes it hard to have an exclusive mating bond, no?
The book is full of blisteringly hot sex since Koviye can dream-travel, but it's not anchored by a great subplot. The two of them spend a good bit of time in a ship heading off to rescue characters from the previous book, only to find that they don't need to. They do have their own adventure, but I wasn't engaged with that storyline and skimmed it.
Other than this lackluster adventure plot, I didn't understand why Koviye couldn't keep putting his hand on people to give them the exstare and still be committed to Jenie. Their solution is a spoiler, so I'll keep it to myself, but it didn't make much sense to me.
Will that stop me from reading future sex planet books? Nope. The plot already doesn't make sense (sex toxin? dream-travel? mental orgasms?) so it's not like anyone is reading these for the physics and anthropological study. We're reading them for a bonkers sexcapades, including zero-gravity business against the roof of a ship, conveniently-engineered spacesuits, and sparkling blue aphrodisiac semen. If that's what you want, that's what you'll get.
Content Warnings: heroine's family dies long before story, there's some war-related violence and death
Suzanne received a digital copy of this book from the publisher for review via NetGalley.
