What to read after “Ice Planet Barbarians” by Ruby Dixon: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
An envoy from a galactic federation lands on the frozen world of Gethen to invite its nations into an alliance. Its people have no fixed gender, and as he crosses the ice with a disgraced politician, he learns how much of his own culture he took for granted.
Abby Abernathy arrives at college determined to avoid bad boys, but a bet lands her living in Travis Maddox's apartment. Their instant attraction turns into a volatile friendship and then something more, as Abby tries to keep her past and her feelings under control.
Fallon meets Ben at a restaurant on November 9, the day before she moves to New York. They spend the day together and agree to meet on the same date every year, building a connection through brief encounters while their separate lives keep pulling them apart.
On the day they both receive a call saying they will die within twenty-four hours, Mateo and Rufus meet through an app for people facing their last day. The two teenagers spend it together, trying to live a lifetime in the time they have left.
On a crowded New York day, Natasha, an undocumented Jamaican immigrant facing deportation, meets Daniel, a Korean-American student on his way to a college admissions interview. They spend the day together, falling for each other as their plans and families collide.
An aging astronomer stays behind at a remote Arctic research station after the world loses contact with everyone else. Far above, the crew of a returning space mission hears nothing from Earth. Their two stories move toward each other across the ice and the dark.
Sascha Duncan is a Psy, raised to suppress emotion and obey the telepathic Council. Lucas Hunter, alpha of a leopard changeling pack, needs her help to catch a killer and recognizes her as his mate. Their bond breaks every rule of her people, and hiding it could cost them both everything.
Earth has been quietly taken over by souls, parasites who erase human minds and live in their bodies. Wanderer, inserted into the body of a resistant girl named Melanie, finds the girl's thoughts and feelings still present, along with her love for a man in hiding.
Virginia Reeve is hired to lead a dozen women into the Arctic in search of a lost expedition. When only some of them come back, she is tried for murder in Boston. The courtroom testimony and the journey north slowly reveal what happened out on the ice.
In 1879 the USS Jeannette sails for the Arctic, chasing a theory about a warm open sea at the pole. Trapped and then crushed by the ice, the crew abandon ship and begin a desperate march across the pack toward Siberia.
While photographing covered bridges in Iowa, Robert Kincaid asks a farmer's wife, Francesca Johnson, for directions. With her family away for a few days, the two begin an affair that becomes the defining love of her life and forces her to weigh passion against duty.
In 2083 a pregnant diplomat meets alien visitors who want humanity to abandon Earth. She argues for a future in which people, their fragile ecosystems and the newcomers can share the planet, while her community debates what consent and survival actually require.
Half-vampire Emmaline travels to Paris to learn how her parents died and is abducted by Lachlain, a werewolf king freed from a century of torture. He is sure she is his mate, but she wants nothing to do with the werewolves' war, even as the bond between them grows.
Pia steals an ancient coin and becomes the target of Dragos, the most powerful dragon alive. When he catches her, he recognises her at once as something rare and precious: his mate. Pia carries secrets of her own, and powerful enemies who would gladly see them both dead.
In 1845 two Royal Navy ships sail to find the Northwest Passage and vanish into the Arctic ice. As the crews endure cold, scurvy and starvation, they are stalked across the frozen waste by a creature that should not exist.
Oliver Barrett IV, a wealthy Harvard student, and Jenny Cavilleri, a sharp-tongued Radcliffe student from a different background, meet and marry against his father's wishes. Their happiness is tested by illness and by the class divide they thought love could overcome.
In 1921, an Iñupiat seamstress joins a Canadian expedition to Wrangel Island as a cook. When the men leave or die, she is left alone on the island for months, learning to hunt and survive while waiting for a rescue that may never come.
Rhage, a Black Dagger Brotherhood warrior cursed with a beast that surfaces when he loses control, meets Mary Luce, a human battling her own illness. Their bond is immediate, and Rhage must decide whether to claim a mate who may not survive his world.
Misery Lark, a Vampyre outcast, agrees to marry Alpha werewolf Lowe Moreland to keep a fragile peace between their species. She has her own reason for entering Were territory, but neither expects the mate bond that forms between them or how much it complicates their alliance.
Nesta Archeron has survived war and transformation, but she cannot forgive herself for what she lost or forget what she did. Sent to train with Cassian in the House of Wind, she is forced to face her anger, her grief and the bond between them while a new threat gathers in the mortal lands.
Years after the war against the Formics, Andrew Wiggin travels as a Speaker for the Dead, revealing the truth of the departed. On the colony world Lusitania he is drawn into the fate of a human family and the alien Pequeninos, whose customs hide a terrible secret.
Taryn Warner is a latent wolf shifter who cannot shift. Her father, a pack alpha, has arranged for her to mate a sadistic alpha she despises. Trey Coleman, alpha of the Phoenix Pack, needs allies against his uncle, so he offers her a deal: she will publicly claim to be his true mate, and he will protect her from the arranged mating. Their temporary bond soon becomes difficult to fake.
Years ago, Callie, a siren, made a bargain with the King of the Night and racked up hundreds of favours she has never repaid. Now he has returned to collect, and he needs her help to find fae warriors who are disappearing from the Otherworld. Their old bargain binds them together, and the feelings Callie buried long ago refuse to stay hidden.
Michael Palin follows HMS Erebus from its Antarctic voyages to the Arctic search for the Northwest Passage, where it set out with HMS Terror in 1845 and vanished. Drawing on letters, logs and the later discovery of the wrecks, the book tells the story of the ship and the men who sailed her.
Start with “The Left Hand of Darkness”, “Beautiful Disaster”, “November 9”: they are the closest to “Ice Planet Barbarians” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Ice Planet Barbarians” these are Fated Mates, First Contact, Survival), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Beautiful Disaster”, “November 9”, “They Both Die at the End”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
