If you are a fan of Star Wars, Star Trek and SciFi, this may be a series for you. We have all you need…out of this world romance, intrigue, race discrimination, and characters that grow and develop as the story is told. Each book spotlights a different couple and could stand alone, but if you are new to the series, I highly recommend starting at the beginning.

I accidentally read the books out of order, grabbing the second book in the series, Alien Vows, and reading that first. It did make reading Alien Bonds easier, because I got used to the unique names and words, though there is a glossary at the end of the book. I invented my own pronunciations making the flow smoother for me. I do that a lot when there are tough names and words to mentally pronounce.

We are on the planet Wakanrea. Space travel is common, yet the species tend to stick to their own kind.

In Alien Bonds, we meet Dina Bellaire, a Terran, human, and Kuaron Du, a Wakanrean. Their meeting change their worlds forever. They meet from across a crowded room and they are floored by shahgunrah, a biological event that is like imprinting for werewolves . Their love is slow to develop, but their mating is instantaneous, creating problems that could be deadly…for her.

Some of the events make me think of the Twilight series, but I will leave that for you SciFi lovers to find out for yourselves. The surprise is worth the wait.

Carmen Webster Buxton has created a world that I got lost in by her ability to bring it to life through her descriptive words and the characters quickly became dear to me. There are hidden agendas, corporate greed, race hatred, romance, acceptance, and more.

Carmen Webster Buxton fills us in on the Wakanrean history and you could call the Alien Bonds historical fiction of the scifi kind. LOL

Jared, a Terran, human, is a character I met early in the story. He is Kuaron’s friend and their lively banter brings me lots of smiles. I wonder…will he get his own story? I would love to see it.

I want to thank you, Carmen, for giving me an opportunity to travel to a distant planet, meet some wonderful characters, and learn some life lessons along the way.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Alien Bonds by Carmen Webster Buxton. ( )

I started this book on a Thursday, and had to remind myself Friday morning that we were very short-staffed and I really needed to drag myself out of bed and go to work. Carmen's books have this effect on me. My motto ought to be "Just one more chapter ..." Famous last words.

I have read pretty much all of Carmen's books, and I think I liked this one the best. I am very glad that it is going to be a series. It is once again set in her ThreeCon universe, ThreeCon being an interplanetary confederation that sets social/political standards for the type of planets that can join it. You might think of it as the European Union without entirely open borders.

The Wakanreans were not really anxious to have to have outsiders on their planet, especially not humans. In place of falling in love or arranged marriages, Wakanreans mate according to the mysterious process of shahgunrah, an immediate physiological reaction to another person that is overwhelming and bonds them for life. Pretty neat, I thought, imagine meeting someone and knowing they're The One. Ha! In the course of the novel, Carmen explores the ramifications: how it has shaped Wakanrean culture, and how it really works out. Just because you can't live without someone, doesn't mean you can live with them, or that they're quite what you were hoping for.

Unfortunately, humans can trigger false shahgunrah in Wakareans, which is disastrous for them, and means nothing to the human. Humans wear have to wear gloves, which diminishes this sort of thing. In Dina Bellaire's (human) and Kuaron Du's (Wakarean) case, however, it's mutual, which Dina finds very hard to accept. As do a lot of other people, human and Wakarean alike. Some Wakareans welcome Dina, others hate her, and refuse to believe that this is real shahgunrah. And of course, scientists flock to study the phenomenon.

There is a fair amount of sex in this, and I'm not a big fan of sex scenes, but these fit into the flow of the story and they're pretty matter-of-fact. There's nothing awkwardly stuck in, clinically graphic or laughably lurid. The book won't be in the running for the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

This is a wonderful piece of world-building, with characters that I really enjoy getting to know. I hope book 2 isn't too long in coming.

A LITTLE BIT OF A SPOILER:
The thing that one might question is how can the two species interbreed? It doesn't seem too surprising that two unrelated species would have the same number of DNA chromosomes, but would the genes be able to work together? I am always willing to allow one slightly dubious starting premise to get a good story going, and Carmen is hardly the first author use the concept. Besides, it's a big, big universe which allows for a lot of coincidences. ( )