#using fejo

[lostmeadowjade]

The Clecanian Series by Victoria Aveline

Choosing Theo*

Freeing Luka

Saving Verakko

Tempting Auzed

Using Fejo*

Releasing Maladek**

Resisting Maxu

Ruling Sikthan*

Bewitching Rhaego

*My personal favs in the series **A novella that is part of the universe but not part of the series

So I finished this series today and I have to say it's pretty good. The first book, Choosing Theo, was recommended as "everything you wanted IPB to be but unfortunately wasn't". And honestly, that is a very good description for the book. It starts with an alien abduction and getting dropped on an alien planet, except that it has more... world building and plot.

As the series progresses you even get more into the politics too. You discover more about the culture, about the struggles and the realities. There are reasons why human women were abducted, why they were brought their, and why they keep being brought there.

This is a race and society that was absolutely devastated by a horrific illness that killed most of the female population, and left many of the survivors with some level of infertility. Now, a few hundred years later their population has 20-to-1 male-to-female ratio. Most of the viable, successful pregnancies produce sons. And for all their research and searching, the closest they have found to viable solution was the illegal procurement of humans.

It is really interesting to see this alien society that's been so horrifically affected and stands on the edges of extinction. The solutions they've come up with for the issue are so different than what you'd expect to happen here on Earth. Temporary short term marriages for the purposes of procreation, assuming that the wife decides her husband would make a good father. Females are precious and treasured because they are so rare, but also for the sacrifices they make in duty to their people.

And then humans start popping up because of illegal abductions, and suddenly they are calling forth mating marks in the males. Something that hasn't been seen in over a hundred some years. And they can successfully procreate with the Clenanians. But there are only so many human women available, which is not nearly enough to lift or ease the burdens of the Clenanian females.

So in the background of all these romances is this political and social landscape continues to grow and develop and just break your heart so much.

[pluviophile-who-likes-coffee]

Be strong. Be confident. Bullshit your way through.

Ruling Sikthand by Victoria Aveline

[paigeypaige19]

He could finally have someone. A companion. Someone who didn’t look at him and only see what they could get. - Using Fejo, Victoria Aveline

[rouremener]

My biggest problem with the Clecanian series is that the male characters are portrayed as being right all the time. Even when they are wrong, it is concerned right.

Off the top of my head examples (spoilers).

Saving Verakko, he doesn't give her all the information and basically argues that he shouldn't have to because he knows what decision she would have made. So he keeps VERY important information about her future and options from her in order to get his way. Then she is forced to say "well yeah you are right". (Also she keeps hitting him when he asks her not to, which red flag)

Tempting Auzed and Using Fejo both have "the main character wants to go back to Earth because they have family there" (if they act on it or not) and that is the big problem to the males. They are like "I should be good enough and that should erase all your feelings about your past". And, in at least Tempting Auzed (I haven't finished Using Fejo), the female character has to APOLOGIZE for it.

And it's not like the characters are shown to be equally wrong about comparable things and they talk things out like a healthy partnership. It's the male character is upset about like, losing his job or her finding out he is engaged. And she having to restart her whole life, forget about everything in her past (because talking about her past upsets the male characters), and be totally happy that a "big strong man" is now in charge of all her decisions.

Anyway, the books can be really fun (also I want one with a female Clecanian and a male human. Like the author kinda throws shade at the female Clecanians) but I keep stopping at the parts that are like, I wouldn't want this relationship. Some of them don't seem to even like each other, they are just stuck because the mating bond will make them sick if they don't hang out.

[r-reads]

I really enjoyed the writing in the Clecanian book series and honestly I 100% recommend y’all to read it! I personally read them all and in chronological order but you can totally read them as standalones. Here is how I would rate them:

1. Using Fejo - currently the last book out, but I think I’ve enjoyed it the most. I do love cocky bastard characters and I like the dynamic between the main two characters. The ending is a bit rushed imo, but I just loved the characters too much to care hh.

2. Choosing Theo - this is the first book in the series and again, I do like my men brooding and grumpy. The characters have amazing chemistry and I think it’s a really good first book that just made me want to read more.

3. Freeing Luka - this was sweet and soft and just very lovely. They basically find out they’re soulmates at the beginning of the book, but they decide to take is slow.

4. Tempting Auzed - I wasn’t really invested in this story, but the writing is still great. It’s like fwb to lovers with lots of angst.

5. Saving Verakko - I absolutely adore the female character and she is so badass, but I don’t fuck with the miscommunication trope so eh

[lostmeadowjade]

Currently reading the Clecanian series by Victoria Aveline. I'm actually on book 4 right now. (I am only like 10 chapters in and my heart is already breaking for the MMC and the shit thsts about to fall his way).

It is an aliens abducted human women type of series. But unlike IPB, these aliens are much more human like (mostly). And there is an actual reason they got abducted, because their people are slowly going extinct. A few hundred years prior an illness swept through and killed most of their women, left it so most of the babies they had were male, and now... they have population ratio of about 20 male to every 1 female. As a result they had to make some changes to their society and culture. And with such a reduced population balance things like *mates have all but disappeared.

Marriage contracts that last 3 months, if a baby happens it will stay with the father while the birth mother moves on to another marriage. But the males need to prove they are capable and worthy of being a father (and husband). So they got to husband-school to learn all they need to know about things like cooking, household management, child care and child rearing, health education, anatomy and sexual performance, etc, etc, etc. They get graded even.

Everything a guy does is meant to attract the attention of a possible wife and then show that he is capable of providing for her and her needs, and the needs for any child they will hopefully have.

As a result, romance had basically disappeared. The males try not to get attached to females who aren't going to stay, and females work to not get attached to the males they will need to leave. Which means that common intimacies like holding hands in public (and kissing) have fallen so out of favour as to be unheard of (specially the kissing).

The series starts out as a very typical alien human romance story. But it develops with each book, expanding on the culture, building the politics, growing with the social changes that happen. It's pretty awesome.

Books read so far:

Choosing Theo

Freeing Luka

Saving Verakko

Using Fejo

(^currently reading, and look at that fucking title! Dude only wanted to finally be chosen by a female, and look look at the title this one is gonna use him no matter if this is a HEA story)

[pluviophile-who-likes-coffee]

The older I get, the more I understand that polite is just a longer path to get where you want.

Ruling Sikthand by Victoria Aveline

[lostmeadowjade]

Ugh.

I want to talk to someone about The Clecanian Series by Victoria Aveline.

I want to talk about the social implications of a people who are verging on extinction searching for compatible alien races. And suddenly finding a near perfect alien race. An alien race that is so compatible that they can call forth mating marks. Something thought to be lost due to a lack of female births and their own genetic engineering of themselves.

I want to lament with someone over the emotionally brutal reality of a world with a declining birth rate, and a drastically reduced female birth rate on top of that. The harsh and ugly truth of each cloister or communal living arrangement for the women having some version of a Wailing Room (a place for those women to retreat to grieve their losses and sacrifices). The fucking horrific need for emotional separation from couplings, from mother and child.

The new ans terrifying risks of the return of mating marks, specially for the men. Since their people is so imbalanced in their male to female ratio, the chances of a female Clecanian finding and forming a mate bond is slim as hell. And the human women so far, they dont feel the full pull of the mate bond. Oh, they feel something, but they arent subject to the truly negative effects of rejection or separation. Something we see a little of in Luka and hear the worst about in Rheago.

I want to speculate with someone about what's coming. About where the story is going with the resistence and the wider need of the people for survival as a species. I want to speculate who the next book will have as the MMC or FMC and what role or impact the couple will have on the larger politics of the world and the interplanetary council.

Ugh... I just want to talk to someone about this. About how Theo spent the majority of his life half shunned because of his extensive burn scars. About how desperate Fejo was to be accepted, to be chosen, that he half turned himself into a play thing to please a potential partner. The way Sikthand still probably can't fall asleep with someone else in the room, not even his mate, because of the life time of paranoia and assassination attempts.

Just all of it. I want to talk to someone about all of it. In depth.