Never Hollowed By The Stare

Earth Fathers: Earth Fathers Are Weird – Lyn Gala

Captain Maxwell Davis and his entire unit scrambled to engage alien ships over Iowa. The aliens snatched him out of his destroyed jet before they continued on their interplanetary hot pursuit. Then they informed Max that Earth was too far outside regular shipping lanes to return him to his planet.

So Max ends up in an alien spaceport looking for work. To afford a ticket home he can either spend three hundred years working with linguists to improve the computer’s questionable ability to translate English or he can take a job as a nanny for an unpopular alien. That way he can afford the ticket in four years. The problem is that the computer may have mistranslated the word “nanny” and there might be a reason an alien is willing to pay such a high fee.

Sometimes, it pays to jump headfirst into something knowing as little as possible.

I started on Earth Fathers Are Weird with the knowledge that there will be tentacles. That’s about it. Now if you have told me beforehand I would be walking into three incubating octopods, me who wouldn’t go near mpreg if I can help it, I would have said blech! and consign this to the farthest reaches of space.

But much like our boy Captain Maxwell Davis who fell madly and deeply in stupid, I was thrown into a completely foreign world of tentacles and whale speak and loved every minute of it.

My biggest gripe with space stories is how authors tend to make things human-centric. For me, this is akin to how most movies almost always revolved around an MC that’s white and/or American while the rest of humanity are either villains or supporting characters. I don’t think aliens would think much of humans, heck we couldn’t even travel outside our own solar system. And in their part of the universe, the humans are the aliens.

This has something to do as well with my niggle regarding alien romances. Frequently, the alien love interest is usually just some guy with blue skin give or take an odd feature or two. Pfft, if you want to do alien, might as well go all the way.

Lyn Gala went full octopus with Rick. Now, he has multiple eyes and just as many tentacles. The genius of Earth Fathers is that I didn’t even feel a smidge of disgust between the pairing of an octopus and a human. Not even when Rick had his tentacles up Max’s business. Not even with Max pregnant with baby aliens. Nor the very graphic birthing scene. Far from it. I was rooting for Rick and Max all the way!

It’s not that you would forget Rick is a tentacled alien. You are constantly aware he’s an alien. I especially liked this fact wasn’t diminished as a way to establish a more ‘acceptable’ love interest. The author did a wonderful job showcasing his caring side, his patience, him being a good listener, him being dorky, his various nuances, his fantastic chemistry with Max despite extreme language barrier, colossal cultural gap and mismatched body parts

At the same time, Max’s humanity and open-mindedness gave him the strength to adapt and face things with good humor. He’s a pop culture enthusiast who regals his alien boyfriend with Darth Vader stories. Gotta love Max right there!

I really enjoyed how these two worked out their differences and learned about each other. With the help of the ship’s computer, Max did translations. They developed their own way of speaking English. I also enjoyed this part a lot because it felt very true to the set-up.

The world-building was one of the best I’ve encountered. Things just unfolded so smoothly even with Max’s limited understanding of Rick’s world. We discover things along with Max as he navigates this new reality he was thrust into. Normally, I would have preferred a dual POV, but seeing things through Max’s eyes really worked here.

And the children. You’d love them too! These three have very distinct personalities. Max named them after fictional characters. There’s Kohei, the eldest. He loves acrobatics. He’s also a very protective big brother. James, named after the captain of the Enterprise, because he loves exploring. And Xander, Max’s little boy who’s named after a Buffy the Vampire Slayer character. He’s the youngest and the smallest and gets cold easily. He loves learning English.

These little aliens brought out Max’s fierce protective side. I really loved how he went above and beyond here. He fought space pirates with a cleaning hook just to keep his family safe. So of course, Rick had to tangle tentacles with him. This human is a keeper.

Major props goes to narrator John Solo. Sometimes, he tends to overact some of his narrations but he performed this book to perfection. He did it so well and the story was so good, I listened to this in one sitting!

Earth Fathers Are Weird is a sweet, beautifully executed love story of two people who not only came from worlds galaxies apart but were of completely different species. How they bridged the gap that spanned this divide was a joy to witness. Hence, this book has gone where no book in my experience has gone before, an mpreg book that earned 5 absolutely perfect stars from me.

Rating:
5 Stars – absolutely perfect

Soundtrack: Space Age Love Song
Artist: A Flock Of Seagulls
Album: A Flock Of Seagulls

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