After really enjoying ‘Taken’, with aliens from Tah’Nar abducting human men because they need mates to procreate, I was looking forward to reading ‘Journey’s End’ even more. In large part that is due to the wonderful main characters: bratty Dale who never shuts up, and his Tah’Narian mate, starship captain Keyno who has no idea what he’s gotten himself into when he picks Dale as his mate. Their relationship did not get off to a smooth start, what with Dale being forcibly abducted, double-dosed with Tah’Narian DNA to cure his leukemia, and now expected to bear young for Keyno. But even by the end of the previous book it had become clear to me that Dale and Keyno are very much in love, and that Dale getting used to Tah’Nar was going to be an exciting experience.

And what an experience it turns out to be. From the entirely different environment and advanced technology, to Keyno’s fascinating home high up in the trees, Dale goes from one astounding event to the next. He meets every new challenge with his characteristic humor, sarcastic comments, and sometimes amazingly well-placed insights. He still talks and sometimes acts before he thinks, much to Keyno’s amusement, and once he is pregnant - oh boy! The descriptions of his physical changes and his difficulty dealing with things he never expected to have to deal with were very amusing in their own right. But since nobody, including the Tah’Narian doctors, really knows how his pregnancy will work, there were many surprises to go around for everyone, keeping them – and me – amused and in suspense.

With Keyno turning out to be the perfect mate, including a secret he should have shared but didn’t, the relationship between Dale and him deepens all the time. They have issues like any mated couple, and I loved watching them deal with everything that was thrown their way. Their friendship with the Tah’Narian ex-enemies, the Onfre, causes some issues, but neither Dale nor Keyno let anyone else’s opinion sway them away from the Onfre spaceship captain Ti and his mate, ex-gang leader Colt.

All in all, this novel is a fast-paced adventure that kept me turning the pages. But it is also a deeply emotional love story between two men from very different backgrounds. And adding in all their friends of various mixed species and their various abilities certainly made for a very colorful and very diverse world. I loved every minute of it!

If you like your science fiction on the wild side and spiked with plenty of humor, if you enjoy reading about humans adapting to a new, very different world while getting used to being mated to an alien, and if you're looking for a space adventure with suspense, some very hot interspecies bedroom activities, and great friends supporting each other all the way, then you will probably like this novel as much as I did. It’s funny, brings Dale’s adventure from book one to an excellent conclusion, and has some adorable mixed-species babies beginning to explore their world. Too cute!
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