Imogen Keeper's Reviews > The Pet Project

Ok, this is definitely my favorite and here's why.

There's a secret genius at work here--and her name is Amanda Milo.

***spoiler & trigger warning. Don't read this if you don't want hear a more editorial style review***

She's offering us a chance to observe ourselves from an outside perspective. The quirks, the peccadilloes, the silliness, the fear, the anxiety, the joy, the sorrow, the love. It's a chance to understand our emotions through another lens ... what's extra interesting and I think it's a form of dramatic irony or something, is that we understand the humans better than the character whose point of view we are in.

I got ahead of myself there, so let me backtrack. This book is told from the perspective of an alien scientist come in to breed humans in a futuristic lab. He arrives with no idea what has happened, a scared female human and three males. He can't communicate. He's only studied them. He needs to make them breed. So he observes them.

He bonds quickly with the woman, she sits in his lap and beside him as he works and he tries to observe her preferences regarding the males. He doesn't understand her though. There's one gross man they're entirely in agreement with (he shouts all the time and jerks off, and the two other males are constantly bellowing at him from their own cages, and the woman seems visibly anxious or annoyed all the time when he's shouting and being lude), but there are two others. One the alien keeper names Beastly because he's got gray hair, one blind eye, and horrible scarring all down his body. The other he names Prime, because he's visibly a prime specimen of a man. Keeper is confounded by her preference for Beastly.

As a reader, as a straight cis woman reader, I'm like ... dude, he's got scars, he's huge, he growls all the time, silver hair can be hot--see Witcher--it's not all that mysterious. But it's funny too. And kind of endearing. There's a fun scene where you get the only line of human dialogue, where Keeper and the woman human are arguing about which one she should breed with and he points at Prime and says in alien that he prefers prime, and she responds, (paraphrase) "Then you should behnd ovair for heem." (I think she's French). Everyone laughs. Except keeper who is astonished. He didn't realize they could communicate, yet here they are. Somehow all laughing at the same thing. Even the mouth breathing jackass man.

The author does an impeccable job ... and I do mean impeccable ... with observing mating patterns as well. For example, according to her alien keeper man-humans almost always touch the woman's genitals prior to copulation to test arousal levels. Rarely do they use their mouths during laboratory matings, because frequently the females kick them in their faces. LOL. The alien is stymied as to why that is, but I 100% understand.

Additionally, she capitalizes on the unique third person involved in every sex scene. We get to be the voyeur observing confusing sexual practices he doesn't understand, but we understand perfectly well. An example, witnessing a mating, the alien doesn't understand if the woman is in pain, so moves to interject and is warned off by the man human. We know as readers the man understands that she's getting used to the size of him, and he's being gentle, and we understand why she's making the face she is. But the alien is concerned. We understand her faces, his reaction, and the alien POV but all the while we have our complete separate take on the whole thing as the man touches her back and calms her down and waits until she's ready. In my head I picture the alien shifting and the man warning him off. "She's fine," i picture him saying. Or maybe, "leave us alone," or maybe even, "don't you f**king dare intervene right now." The alien does warn us that males become especially territorial and unpredictable during matings. Lol.

I do recognize we're talking about something that underneath the surface layer is really dark and troubling, but it's handled in a way that allowed me to appreciate what it was, rather than take it too seriously. She does represent the woman's emotional turmoil at the forced breeding, but doesn't go in super deep. A lot is left to the reader to take and add what they like to the story.

These stories are not particularly dark despite the somewhat gory subject matter. But the undercurrent is there. Really surprising, bold, unique, well-crafted, well-researched, nuanced and fun reads. At least for me.

Amanda Milo, I salute you. And I admire you. And I truly hope you add to a series that is rapidly becoming a favorite. A lot of book are forgettable. Yours are not.