If you’ve been following along with the Ice Planet Barbarians series by Ruby Dixon, we’ve made it to book ten! But Barbarian’s Hope comes with a twist – instead of a human and Sa-Khui relationship we instead get a second-chance romance between a Sa-Khui male and female. It’s a story of loss and recovery, so it gets quite deep and emotional, but I really enjoyed seeing the perspective of life from a Sa-Khui female. There may be spoilers for the earlier novels in this review, but I’m not going to give a synopsis of the series to date as there are previous reviews available, and the author gives a brief introduction to the planet and its inhabitants in each book.

Asha is miserable and lonely. When she resonated to Hemalo, it was a happy time for them both until she suffered a miscarriage and lost their kit. In her grief, she lashed out at Hemalo and drove him away. Now she has a young Sa-Khui female, Farli, as a roommate and Hemalo lives with the single males. Her favorite thing to do is to babysit some of the humans’ babies even though it reminds her of her own loss. As time has passed, she has been taking stock of her life and how much things have changed for her. At one time she had been one of the few single females and had garnered lots of male attention, but with the human females’ entry into the Sa-Khui lives when their ship crash-landed on the planet, everything has changed. Now most of the males have mated a human female, though Hemalo has shown no interest in them. When she’s around him she can tell that their tribemates are waiting for them to come to blows, but she is tired of feeling so sad and wants to move forward in her life.

When Claire, one of the humans, approaches Asha to see if she can help her set up a holiday celebration to recreate some of their familiar human Christmas traditions, Asha is intrigued. She hasn’t bonded with any of the humans so far, but as Claire and Asha plan the events, they become friends and Asha’s loneliness and grief start to fade as she finds a new purpose.

Hemalo is also grieving the loss of his mate and his pre-term kit. He had seen how his presence was making things worse for Asha after the miscarriage and left her, in hopes that it would help her heal. But nothing he does seems to be the right thing. When Asha comes around with Claire to tell them about their holiday plans, he sees that her spirits have improved and he is glad. As they encounter each other more over the next few weeks, their khuis start to sing to each other, proving that they still have a connection. But when they start to resonate again, Asha becomes frightened. Resonance is a sign that mating will result in a kit. Can Asha put aside her fears and trust that this could be a second chance for her and Hemalo to rekindle their earlier happiness and become a family?

This will be a hard read for anyone who has had a miscarriage or lost a child, as Asha’s grief and feelings about the loss and the disintegration of her relationship with Hemalo are not sugarcoated. With the passing of time she is able to see that Hemalo was also grieving and that they processed the loss in different ways. When he thought he was giving her space, she thought he was abandoning her, yet couldn’t blame him for that because she had been treating him poorly. I really enjoyed how her character developed over the course of the story. Asha is portrayed as a strong and passionate female, and in contrast, Hemalo is calm and measured. He’s not an alpha male like so many of the other Sa-Khui males but prefers to keep his head down and work hard. Their differences are what attracted them to each other in the first place. Asha and Hemalo have to go through an adventure (literally!) as they deal with the resonance and work out how to be a couple again.

Many of the other secondary characters make an appearance and the translation of human winter traditions (including a Secret Santa exchange) to the Sa-Khui adds some comedic elements to lighten the mood of the story. There’s also a side storyline with Claire, who is happily mated to Ereven and expecting his baby, but has some unresolved issues with her former pleasure-mate, Bek. As with previous entries in the series, the worldbuilding continues to reveal more interesting tidbits about the planet and its inhabitants. The author treats the sensitive subject matter with the care it deserves, and Barbarian’s Hope stands out as one of my favourites of the series.