Savior of the Domini

Mates of the Domini #1

by Talia Rhea

PEONY'S ENTIRE LIFE CHANGED AFTER A LATE NIGHT WALK

Drugged and abducted, she wakes up in a small, metal room being brought food by a giant lizard-dinosaur alien. She's not alone either. She's trapped with four other women she's never met and, caged in the corner, a different alien that looks like he's been beaten quite badly. She can't help but feel sorry for him, even if the other women are weary. He doesn't even get water.

ATEM'S ENTIRE LIFE CHANGED WITH A BOWL OF WATER

Captured and shamed, he struggles to stay awake, barely aware of the females moving around his cage. Until the soft splashing of water opens his eyes on the most beautiful sight he's ever beheld. He doesn't know her name, he doesn't know her species, but he knows that she's his. He will do anything to protect this sweet female who gave him everything when she had nothing.

A JOINING THAT CHANGES THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE

An honorable domini always repays his debts, and he owes one to these impossibly soft females that somehow saved his life. The four that will be his sisters, and the one that he will claim for his mate. And from a humble bowl of stale water comes an impossible gift that will change everything.

Genres: Aliens, Science Fiction, Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction Romance, Erotica, Royalty

575 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 9, 2022

Reviews

[readabookonce · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s an absolute WASTE to make humans a virtually unknown species and not make them have to teach the aliens how to kiss. I was so excited for Peony to teach Atem what kissing was, but HE ALREADY KNEW.

MAIN CHARACTER NAMES AND AGES
Peony Hoffman (?) | Atem / vi Dominani (?)

FEATURES
∘ alien-human romance
∘ leader / president / king mmc
∘ language barrier (brief)
∘ she rescues him first, he rescues her back
∘ soulmates
∘ adoptive single father

REVIEW
I enjoyed the domestic moments between Peony and Atem. We got to see the tenderness and love they felt—and displayed—for each other, which is always a welcome addition to all romance novels.

Listen, this book was good, okay? BUT it did not have to be almost 600 pages. There was an external plot, but not enough to justify the length. It dragged at some points, mainly due to the lack of action, but partially due to the repetitive nature of Peony and Atem’s thoughts.

The betrayal was disappointingly obvious—which is not a bad thing (I’m a broken record, I know)—but I was hoping the hints were just a red herring to a more gut-wrenching twist. Regardless, the final battle was plenty action-filled, and it’s always entertaining to watch a “weak” character kick ass.

I loved all the characters, especially Temnavi. The kid’s enthusiasm, embarrassment, and sense of duty was adorable. The human women forming a sisterhood because of their shared trauma was sweet, especially with how different their personalities are. I will eagerly be continuing the series, as I’m curious to see what direction the overarching plot will go.

OW/OM DRAMA none
CHEATING none
THIRD ACT BREAKUP no
ENDING HEA — no epilogue but the couple is settled

POV dual; brief additional pov by Temnavi / third person
SPICE LEVEL 4.5 / 5
RATING 4 / 5

[Poppy || Monster Lover]

I’m sorry, but I could NOT handle the whole “I’m too manly to poop in a cage so I’m going to be constipated forever” thing. The writing itself was a bit disjointed. The plot had some potential, but it wasn’t working for me.

[BJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had great reviews but I didn't like the silly OTT tropes. The h is perfectly perfect, the alien H exhibits many awful human traits e.g. won't listen or believe her but he praises her nest building (house keeping). I finished it but it was an effort which I won't repeat.

[a seductive cactus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun- no push pull between the MCs and although they get together early on we still get to see their relationship grow and watch them communicate. A little over the top with the whole setup - of course the alien you rescued was a warrior king and super wealthy and wants to adopt all these humans as sisters, and the pregnancy subplot was SO annoyingly obvious with Peony’s “phobia” but even still this was a super enjoyable read

[Autumn Miller ~ autumnbookreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I think the pacing could have used some work here and there, I really enjoyed the story. I am quite intrigued by the world and culture of Turv and I am excited for future books!

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skimmed most of the end bit. I just kept saying okay let’s wrap it up. It was cool they didn’t have a weird population issue like so many of these series lately…. A lot of unique cultural ideas. Id give it a 4 without the end bit.

[girlwithhearteyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This alien scifi romance didn’t have a lot of surprises story-wise, but I found it to be a super comforting read.

Sometimes I just want to read about two ‘good’, lovable characters be low-angst about their heart eyes for each other, and succeed as they navigate differences in cultures, figure out how to communicate, and escape/slay enemies. The way it all played out in this book was very satisfying.

This sums up Peony and Atem’s dynamic:

“Vi adassi,” he whispered reverently.

Peony beamed at the title. “Vi domin.”

[Moldy Bread · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wary vs Weary

The author wrote a book and got “weary” and “wary” mixed up. What is happening to the literary world? People are getting stupider, for sure.

Hey, author! The former word (weary) means being exhausted/tired; the latter word (wary) means being cautious. Those “dumb twits in the cage were being wary.”

I made it for about four chapters in before I called it quits. There were way too many amateur mistakes for me to ignore: missing words, TERRIBLE dialogue, unlikely observations and deductions…and on and on…

The story felt like it was written by a very naïve teenage girl, so the characters were as limited as that. A character is only as intelligent as its creator, after all.

Another thing that bothered me was that Atem is an alien but the author has him thinking like a human man (sort of 🫩). That’s in addition to making observations and drawing conclusions that should’ve been difficult or impossible for him to do, being a different species of sentient being and all. If he’d been weirder, it’d have been more believable.

I used to give five stars to indie authors out of principle. Not any longer. All of this shit writing is making readers stupider and is creating more shitty writers. I’m always skimming through exuberant reviews on absolutely terrible books no brick-and-mortar publisher would ever take on. I’m simply appalled at how far our standards have lowered.

My [non-monster/alien smut] book recommendations in case you want to read something fantastic:
Jim Butcher - Libby or Hoopla
Sarah Lyons Fleming - KU
Sarah M Eden (The Dread Penny Society) - Libby or Hoopla
Emily Larkin - Libby or Hoopla

[KLynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 rounded up.
This book has the familiar story of many other alien abduction romances, but it was fun, if not a little long.
Atem, the MMC and leader of his planet is betrayed and finds himself injured and held captive on an enemy ship. Enter our MFC, peony, who saves him and in turn he gives the human hostages/refugees a new life on his planet. More shenanigans ensue as they try to track down these betrayers and learn their new life together. Atem realizes that there are more important things than ruling and they live hea ... But do they?
Lol! There were moments in this book that gave me a good chuckle and overall I would recommend this book if you're after a good familiar alien abduction story. I did find myself a little bored in the middle. Like I said ... It was looooong.

[Honest Mabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

fan effing tastic

I cannot begin to process the emotional roller coaster of love I have for this book. It was 575 of excellency. Really not that much redundancy for the story. I felt the real estate given was exactly what was needed. It told their story completely and wonderfully. 10 out of 5 stars

[becca ⚔️ · Rating 1 out of 5]

So bad 😭 the plot was not identifiable and I hated all the characters

[britta ⋆˙⟡]

Dnf 39% cute story with good characters but quickly slowed down when they arrived on MMC home planet. Need a little more happening.

[OneDayI'll · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet and charming

Peony just woke up with 4 other women in a cargo hold on an alien ship. To say her day is going bad is an understatement. But she's doing better than the poor alien chained down in the cage across the hold. Little did she know that offering him her scant bit of water would save them all. There was a reason he was kept chained and left hungry.

Spoilers ahead.
Finally a sci-fi romance that isn't auctions, alpha holes, Mars needs women tropes and primitive dominance displays. Peony isn't a hand wringing Mary Sue. Atem isn't a knuckle dragging jerk. They're both fully developed characters that communicate- even when they don't understand each other's languages. Peony has a bit of a Daphne situation, constantly being kidnapped, but she doesn't exacerbated it with TSTL reactions. She isn't a fighter but she's a thinker and adapts on the fly. Atem, his only black mark is his lack of trust. And there's 1 scene that you will want to beat him with a pool needle over. He has his reasons, real reasons, but it's still frustrating. And you wonder about Peony forgiving him so quickly. But she understands the why of it, even if she hates it turned on her momentarily. This book had a lot of thought put into it and you can tell it. The world building is well done. The characters are more than 2D caricatures. There's a couple plots twisting about each other. The author worked out part of a language. Other parts have all too human of words that could have been tweaked just a bit, but efforts were made in other areas. The story was a good combination of simple and complex with a satisfying conclusion. And in a genre currently overpopulated with hideous tropes and far too many assault scenes passed off as "love" this was a gem to find.

[Leanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fine i’ll review this. For a book about alien dick, the quality of sex scenes dropped pretty harshly after the first time. Just shoving things into other things with subsequently quivering thighs and hyped up afterglow, just seemed a bit unearned to me. The FMC dialogue and inner thoughts are so out of place - valley girl/not like other girls/oh i’m suddenly really sexy to men on this planet?? type of characterization, compared to the MMC who speaks eloquently, intelligently, and of course to the height of female fantasy. To be fair, she is written as kind and resilient and a fighter, but the fact that she is so happy to immediately devote herself to the alien love of her life, marry him, and bear as many babies as possible gives me the squicks. The story and plot climax is fine, but you could see it coming a mile away. There’s other books in this universe but I’ll pass.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

In all my reading there have been plenty of books that were so bad I wanted to give them negative stars, but overall, there’s only been about 10 of those that I DNF. This book is one of them. All the other times I’ve always had hope that the author can have a strong finish or there’s a mystery I haven’t figured out yet but in this book I have completely lost any will to go on. It is too dumb and so poorly constructed. I’ve stopped at 50%, but I should have stopped at 25%, but I still had a small bit of hope so I persisted & read in 10 minute increments over days as that is all I could suffer though at a time. At 15%, after interacting with each other for less than a day & only being able to speak 5 words to each other (their names, yes & no, and the name of his home planet) the couple has sex. And, both of them think she can’t get pregnant because they are different species and in their heads they say this to themselves a lot so you know, as a reader, that she’s 99% pregnant already. And then at 25% they’ve arrived as his home planet & the humans are injected with something that allows them to speak the alien language, you find out Atem is basically a king, and he declares he’s going to take care of the them all for the rest of their lives. The book could literally have ended there. Both Peony (don’t get me started on that name) and Atem have basically decided they want to be together and this is when I know this book is going to be crap. This is an alien romance book and the couple is already together at 25% with no drama? What’s going to happen in the other 400 pages??? At that time I told a friend this book is going to be 350 pages too long and I stand by that. Also, Peony has an extreme phobia to doctors and anything medical related, which maybe makes sense on Earth, but on a planet in which you basically are scanned & everything gets fixed if you don’t get over that phobia in 10 min I think you are a stupid person. But this is a plot device for the author cause how else will the fact that she is pregnant not get discovered? Peony has to refuse the scan – even when she’s horribly hurt in a few chapters she miraculously has no injury to her stomach so she refuses to have that part scanned (again). I pounded my head so hard when she refused the scan the second time – it’s just stupid (I wish I had a better word than stupid, but that’s all I my brain wants to say – stupid, stupid, stupid). And the stupidness continues…Atem calls Peony an ancient word and it sounded nice and then he translated it. And the translation just happens to be “water bearer” and what did Peony do first when she met Atem? She gave him water. She is a literal water bearer and his culture just happens to have a love pet name that translates to “water bearer.”? It’s too much stupid. And, yet, I kept reading because it is so hard for me to not finish a book I start and then I get to 50% and I’m done. I can read no more. At 50% Peony & Atem are on their first date and Atem is about to ask her to be his mate and Peony is about to agree (so the romance is locked down at 50%???) and Atem gets a frantic phone call from the caretaker of the humans. One human has sent bloodied towels to the laundry and even though the human has told her she is fine the caretaker still thinks something is wrong so she calls Atem. Does she ask the other 3 humans that are right next door what is going on? No, she does not! So Atem rushes back even though Peony is trying to tell him it’s probably fine (so he’s basically not listening to her) and he barges into Hattie’s room and it turns out she’s just on her period. And, even though she tells everyone she is fine no one will leave her alone. It turns out the alien females do not have periods and even though everyone is an adult the first thing Peony asks Hattie is “Is it…you know?” Seriously, you aren’t children, you can say the word period in front of others. Finally, a mature discussion of what a period is happens and Hattie says she was embarrassed to be the first and didn’t want to tell anyone and was waiting to see what they did and then she’d do that next time. Are we 12?? And then there’s a discussion of how bad human males handle periods and I think it’s supposed to be a part in which the reader laughs and sees themselves in the characters and all I can think, again, is this is stupid. The alien healer then tells them he can end the period & symptoms easily and the healer is aghast that Earth doesn’t have the medical know how to do something similar and one of the human characters literally says this “It’s a natural process. Why mess with it if you don’t have to?” I wanted to smack the author so much for writing that. Um, no, we don’t have good care for periods because it’s a natural process. We have no care because men are still in charge of health care and female needs are not taken seriously. And while Hattie wants to get rid of the period, Peony is like, nope I’ll stick with the bleeding. I know exactly zero women that would do this. And then the subject of sex during a period comes up and Atem says “If our bed becomes a battlefield (full of period blood) then that just calls to the warrior in my blood.” And, that, my dear reader, was when I decided I wasn’t reading one more page of this disaster.

I know I’m writing a book report here, but I have so much rage that I read half of this book I have to point out more stupid things. I do not understand the humans escape plan from the evil alien kidnappers. They countdown to the second to when the alien delivers food when they could have just listened for the door being opened & got into place then. And their plan was to lock themselves in with basically no food or water or a way to get out? If Atem hadn’t been there they would have died. Next time I’m kidnapped I’m stealing the key and locking myself in the room with the evil aliens waiting just outside the door – sounds like a solid plan. Also, the humans are adapting way too well to alien life and not being able to return to Earth and most are already pursuing what they want to do on the planet within days. One wants to be a healer. One is studying alien philosophy. But, not our female lead Peony. No, she just wants to lounge around and do nothing. Am I supposed to respect this character? Peony also freely admits she was a mean girl in high school (pretty sure we are supposed to hate mean girls) and she enjoys getting to be a mean girl again to a female alien that was mean to her first. And while she mentions high school Peony also says she had a GED and worked at a diner. Again, am I supposed to like & respect this character? I get the impression that her job in this alien world is basically to be a baby mama that is taken care of by her man. That is not who I want my characters to be. I need my characters to be more than that. And the fighting culture is stupid. It’s one thing to be warriors, but it’s another thing to just fight with someone while in line for a snack for no reason other to see who can win. And, it happens all the time. You’re expected to tell the whole planet your warrior stories and, I’m sorry, but if I just had to kill an evil alien as a human woman and I’m still wearing the bloodied clothes from that fight, I’m not getting in front of a huge crowd to recount my trauma so you can cheer. Writing all this stuff down has made me so mad that some account out there recommended this book and that I decided to read it. We, as readers, really need better standards then this – this book should not have a rating of 4 stars. There are so many books out there – this shouldn’t be one anyone spends their time on.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent Read!

First time reading this author and though the book could have used another pass through editing as the errors occasionally pulled me out of the story I nevertheless was totally engaged with the unfolding events. I LOVE reading long in depth stories. This one had it all…romance, intrigue, action, adventure, steam all rolled into a well written fantastically imagined society and world.
Loved the perfectly crafted characters and definitely can’t wait for the next book.Hopefully the editing will be better.

[Trista Peterson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I mean, this could be a great story. But, the editing is AWFUL. Not only are many common words misspelled, but there are added and/or missing words in a lot of sentences. With a mistake on almost every page, sometimes more, I do not know how this book is rated so high. I finally stopped at 38% because the author wrote "frienemy" instead of frenemy.

[Micca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was just fine. I love the worldbuilding and how different the planet Turv is, but I’m deducting points since the FMC is sooooooo one dimensional. Literally everyone else is more interesting.

Will continue to read the series though since I’m fascinated by the planet Turv!

[Ki Taeni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too long, but I enjoyed the story. Although I’m now more invested in the overarching plot than the individual love stories

[Latestfire · Rating 2 out of 5]

Literally 300 pages too long

[Ana M. Román · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peony es abducida y cuando se despierta comparte encierro junto con otras cuatro chicas y un alien, Atem, que se encuentra encerrado en una jaula con tantos mecanismos de seguridad que no puede ni mover la cabeza. Compadeciéndose de su falta de agua y comida Peony se atreve a darle parte de la suya aunque apenas tiene lo suficiente para mantenerse con vida. Obviamente, Atem acaba profundamente conmovido por el gesto y cuando Peony y las demás lo liberan de la jaula él les devuelve el favor con creces, especialmente a Peony de la que ha acabado prendado.

Lo más destacable de la historia es sin duda Atem y su relación con Peony, esta acaba llevándose al mejor especimen masculino de su especie, literalmente. Pero la descripción del nuevo mundo así como las costumbres y creencias de los Domini también ha estado muy bien.

A pesar de sus más de 500 páginas, según Amazon, me ha mantenido enganchada de principio a fin y tengo muchas de ganas de seguir con las aventuras del resto de las chicas. Cada una especial a su manera.

[Kassey J · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually found this book to be good. I was in a bit of a funk when it came to books and decided let's give this one a try, and I'm glad I did. I usually dont much care for books that aren't in first person but this one didn't bother me as badly as some. It was more of a second person than a third person lol. Anyways the fmc didn't annoy me to much so maybe that's why I'm rating it so high. It got me out of the funk, so I can't rate it anything lower than a 4.5 star read.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alien warrior dude with trust issues meets human woman who trusts too much. What could go wrong?

It’s a personal preference but I found this to be just a bit too tame. I want my aliens to be more weird and the cultural differences more stark.

But if you are looking for easy going alien smut you have come to the right place!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast burn. Lots of scenes. Great book

[Bailey]

Got super bored around 60% in and never felt like picking it back up. DNF.

[Melodious Midnight Melancholy「مروة」 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 ⭐️s.

[Romance · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Reads ok. i Felt like he was too human like. Sure there were minor differences but it just didn’t feel like he was alien. not crazy about the immediate mate idea. And having sex within a day and they can’t even communicate…definitely sex pretending to be romance. I lost interest and skimmed to the end. Just not my cup of tea. Felt long…and killing off the abductors way too quickly…nothing to really hold my attention.

[Ups, look at the time · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. it was a sweet romance between an alien king and a human.
the writing was good and there was only a few moments that I didnt like (for exemple:how many times did he needed to say that she was amazing for bringing him water?!?! we get it!).
to me its a 3.8 stars 🌟 but I also dont feel like it was amazing enough to get 4.

still recommend it.

[Imani · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s fun💀

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was an okay story with decent sci-fi world building. I really enjoyed the the way the "weak" human woman continued to find ways to kick ass and save herself. Some of the tropes were ridiculous and over the top (main female characters refusal to get medical scans, male doesn't believe female and drama ensues, etc).