Best Out-of-Space Cop Award-Despite-the-Title
Judge: Chris Stock

Linda Mooney has been writing a lot and for quite a while. Her newest book “Beauty’s Alien Beast” is the best one yet. 

A rough, yet honorable, female intergalactic cop with some fierce mental power, called psionic abilities, is on a break when she sees a beast-alien from a mining planet getting ambushed by vicious, little mean aliens called Kronners. Instead of being able to help him, the cop gets caught as well and knocked out. Both awake in a container. The beast can’t use his strength to get to the enemies, and she’s got an implant that sends shockwaves of pain through her brain when she tries to use her power. Worse, their prison cells are hooked up on an alien version of dark-net and they are forced to “entertain” subscribers. Of course, they escape — after all, it is a SCI-FI Rom, but that’s when it really gets interesting. What they had to do to stay alive is illegal and they are facing their own planet’s judgements, which is just as dangerous as the criminal mind behind the kidnapping who is still out to get them.

I loved everything about this book, though I think a different title would have been a better choice.

FIVE BOUNDLESS STARS

I love Alien Romance stories, but I have a new twist on it.  I don’t want the alien to be just a larger version of a human male.  I want him to be an alien and for the two to find love despite their differences.  

In Beauty’s Alien Beast, Maura is a Jojo, which is an intergalactic cop with psychic abilities.  She is a badass, no damsel in distress here.  She comes to the aid of an Ellinod who is being jumped.   That is when she and the Ellinod, Safan are captured.

In this author's world, interspecies breeding is against the law, and Maura and Safan are forced to perfume sexual acts in front of a live streaming audience in order to humiliate and damage their reputations.  

The situation Maura and Saran found themselves in were impossible because it was either perform or die.  Being in captivity the way they were, started a bond that only grew stronger.  Maura began to love Safan.  

This story was so good because their world was so rigid and complex that even when they did what was right, it was wrong.  And the bad guy seemed to win.  I broke out in tears more than once reading this.  

I loved this story, from the kickass heroin the very protective self-sacrificing hero, It was wonderfully complex, and I want more from this world.  I am giving it 5 Boundless Stars.  

Reviewed by Tammy, Love Romances and More

Linda Mooney’s CAPTIVE SURRENDER is Sci-Fi erotica hot enough to ignite all burners.

Psi Police Corps elite member Maurra, comes to the aid of an alien being attacked by Kronners outside a bar. The next thing she knows, she awakens naked in a cell on the Kronner ship, her psychic abilities useless. The alien she attempted to help, a giant of a humanoid male, Safan, is in the cell next to hers. They are told their survival is dependent on their putting on a hot sex show for their audience. Maurra and Safan do what they have to in order to buy some time, as they wait for an opportunity to escape and discover who is behind their abduction.

Linda Mooney’s CAPTIVE SURRENDER is longer than a novella in length. Don’t let the length dissuade you from purchasing this book. Mooney’s world building is terrific but only skims over the different races and planets because of story length. The entire universe and its inhabitants (of all shapes and sizes) are the playing field for this erotic sci-fi tale. The alien sex is definitely sizzling and the storyline easily holds reader interest.

Readers who enjoy their sci-fi on the steamy side with lots of action will all be very pleased with Linda Mooney’s CAPTIVE SURRENDER.

This is an objective review and not an endorsement of this book.

My Thoughts: You guys know I'm a mood reader, right?  And, no, that's not a like a mood ring or anything.  I don't even know how you could be a mood ring reader.  Which is really not the point.  I read what I'm in the mood to read when I'm in the mood to read it.  Sometimes - like last night - I get in the mood for books about naughty, somewhat non-consensual sex between aliens.  You know what?  I'm secure enough in myself to admit that.  I like naughty books that are set in space where aliens are doing it.  I also like amnesiac vampires.  That has nothing to do with this book, I'm just pointing out that I enjoy a wide range of subject matter.  Wild sex between two nearly incompatible species just happens to be high upon my list of likes.

In other words, this book was AWESOME!  Maurra is forced to have sex with an alien that she never would have chosen on her own and against all odds they begin to form a bond.  They're being forced to break the law (inter-species sex is a no-no!) and they fight their weird attraction and it's perfectly AWESOME!

Both Safan and Maurra are strong characters who are willing to sacrifice themselves to save innocent lives.  They take responsibility for their actions and handle the fallout from what they were forced to do with dignity.  I honestly loved them as a couple and wouldn't be AT ALL adverse to reading more about their adventures.

Linda Mooney has created a vivid and interesting universe, a bad, bad man who wants to hurt those in authority and two people who come together and make things work under some pretty awful circumstances.

Hot alien sex, guys.  I'm totally there.

You know, sometimes you just need a little dirty alien sex.  And this book delivers that --in spades.  Maurra is an intergalactic psionic cop... a JoJo. She can use her mind as a weapon, as well as her fists.  And she has to do just that, when she witnesses a group attacking a giant alien at a bar.  What she doesn't realize is, she is actually the target.

The bad guys knock her out and she awakens in captivity, along with the alien she comes to know as Safan.  She quickly finds out that her captors plan to force them to have sex for a pay-per-view audience.  Beyond the fact that they are strangers, the situation is more upsetting 1) because interspecies sex is a serious crime and 2) because Safan is an enormous male.  Safan is humanoid, but he is a giant compared to Maurra... and he is, er, proportional.  Yet, it's try or die.

The sex is actually pretty hot.  Like, look around the room and see if anyone notices you sweating, hot.  And it takes very little time for tender feelings to emerge between Maurra and Safan, despite the horror of their situation.

When the couple eventually escapes, they face condemnation from their own people.  Maurra is stripped of her position and the consequences are even worse for Safan.  But they manage to make their way back to each other and it gets even hotter from there.

The world here is pretty massive.  And the book is a bit on the short side, more like a longer-novella. So there are a lot of things that are just touched on in broad strokes, especially when it comes to all the different races and planets.  That might bother some people who like all that a bit more fleshed out.  But when I read a book about hot alien sex, I'm satisfied with the focus on the down and dirty.  And we definitely get that... with a good dash of action and a surprising bit of heart. I liked it.

“Redonk nutshell: Psi-space cop and huge horned alien are captured by rogue aliens and forced to have sex while being filmed."

Okay. I'd be lying if I said I didn't giggle while writing the above. But literally, this is, more or less, the first half of Captive Surrender by Linda Mooney. The second half is our hero & heroine dealing with the repercussions of their actions, emotionally and, well, lawfully.

This was my first read by Linda Mooney, and I had no qualms with her style. I enjoyed the world she created, though we don't get the full taste of it. Captive Surrender is a novella, a tease into the world Ms. Mooney has created. Our heroine, Maurra, is the alpha here, while her hero, Safan takes shotgun as Beta. And that's okay - it works. They play off each other fairly well.

This novella tangos between erotica and romance. It gets fairly graphic at times, though the romantic conflict takes precedence as the story progresses. To me it felt rushed, and I didn't really believe the connection these two felt for one another.

Long story short, Captive Surrender makes for a great quickie. Steamy, sensual, and adventurous.

This one left me with very conflicting emotions. There were the ups and there were the downs, but ultimately, I'll say there were more ups.

Let me start off by saying that sci-fi novels have very similar storylines and since I've already read more than a few sci-fi novels, this one seemed pretty predictable to me. Which ultimately debilitated the excitement and suspense for me. But well, Mooney is a great writer and her words carried me to the end.

The world building is amazing. Detailed but not overtly fanciful or redundant. It was stunning, really. All the peripheral stuff came together with the nitty-gritty, and voila, you get yourself a crazy backdrop. Lol. Aside from that, the characters were well-formed and their interactions were..well, fun. Those that made an impression were actually those that were witty and funny. Lol, got a kick out of those.

Maurra started off as a very serious, no-nonsense type of officer. Stern and always in control. But you could see as the story progressed, she embraced more of her feminine side and even developed a sense of humor in the end.

The male protagonist, Safan the Ellinod, is a giant hulk of a man. Not man, more of a humanoid alien. He has horns which are as sensitive as his manhood. Lol. Anyway, not the point. To me, Safan wasn't the ideal male protagonist. Not that I don't like him, just not the best that I've seen. He's dominant in bed, yeah, but out of bed? It's more of Maurra steering the reins, so nope, he didn't make the cut for me.

Captive Surrender is like the rated version of Jess Granger's Beyond the Shadows. I have to say, Mooney sure has some sick and sadistic thoughts up there! But patrons enjoy it, so why not right?

Two things that bugged me was the speed at which their feelings for each other developed and that sometimes there were just too many coincidences that it made the problem solving a little too convenient. Firstly, how can you actually develop feelings for someone just because he was gentle to you in the course of being sexually violated?

And about the convenience issue, somehow during her rather ambitious endeavors, EVERYTHING was to her favor, and EVERYTHING that happened seemed to fit into her plans. Which got quite fallacious at some point.

Furthermore, the hype and suspense dwindled down midway though the book. But it got back up again right after! I swear, it shot up real quick. Lol, a little wacky there.

The ending..Sigh, the ending. The ending was suh-weeeet. Really romantic!

As a sci-fi novel, it's considered not bad; As a erotica, woah, it's burning up here! World building and character development, not bad either. However, the predictability and all tempted me to stop reading the book quite a number of times, is what ultimately made me give it a meager 3 stars.

Captive Surrender by Linda Mooney is a futuristic science-fiction tale of a psionic adept named Maurra who gets kidnapped and forced into a forbidden sexual relationship with a male from a different species, an Ellinod named Kuvma Safan to provide entertainment and profit for an unholy alliance of creatures that include a race of Kronner and an evil mastermind named Vol Brod. Despite the forced nature of their intimacies, Safan and Maurra find a way to bond with each other and even though subsequent events cause their separation and individual punishments, they continue to have feelings for one another. Attempts to deal with an abruptly changed life despite having been stripped of her special status as a galactic enforcer thrusts Maurra in the midst of a prison riot and she and Safan abruptly decide to go after the perpetrator of their downfall. Their partnership will require considerable adjustment and an identification of common goals before they can consider any kind of life together but external forces may be more than they can overcome.

An imaginative romance that combines erotica and science fiction elements in an entertaining tale. There are a plethora of species alluded to, each with its own rules and several exotic locales are described as the main characters travel to different planets. The author creates an entertaining pair of beings whose continued adventures would be of interest to sci-fi fans who like a little spice with their stories.

On the whole I enjoyed this sci fi romance. It seemed like a long novella in length. It’s hard telling sometimes with Kindle. 

There was a decent attempt at world building. It suffered a bit from “space sprawl.” Many new or casual sci fi authors tend to make their civilizations too big. Instead of a rational number of star systems, there were references to galaxies which would just be too unwieldy for any empire to rule or govern or police. But the actual planets and destinations within those planets were fairly vivid with some drawn more clearly than others. Space ship tech was largely ignored. No effort made to convince me any thought had been put into how ships would move through space with or without FTL.

The cultures of the hero and heroine are basically not explored at all which was a bit of a disappointment, as it made it difficult to understand the characters as well as I could have.

Captured for forced alien sex is a fairly typical set up and I can usually be tempted into giving it a read. This one held up better than some motivation wise. It was basically for revenge and greed. Sex scenes were fairly explicit and hot.

Our two protagonists were both police officers of a sort. The forced sex caused them to break the intergalactic law against interspecies sex. I liked how the author chose to include that and her rationale for making the law. If she chooses to revisit this universe with other characters that set up could be a background for many more relationship stories.

The relationship was nice but could have been much richer. The two of them decided to make the best of the forced sex thing and during the 2 down times developed a certain sort of caring for each other. My belief in that relationship would have been greater if more time had been spent on this portion. If they had had more than 2 or 3 days to fall for each other before they escaped. It would have made their trying to get back together more believable also.

I was actually looking forward to their learning to live together and finding a spot for themselves in a universe where their love was forbidden but the story didn’t go that way even though it seemed like it was heading there. The whole idea of no cross species sex was just dropped even though the reason for the ban was not solved in any manner. These two ended up together and that seemed hunky dory after all the hoopla about no interspecies sex so that crossbred horrors would not result. That was one of the biggest oversights of the book.

The biggest problem I had with the book was that the heroine was just too powerful. She was a bit of deus ex machina all on her own. She was a psion. So basically she could shut down whole space and/or energy fields, stop bullets, put people to sleep and spy on the minds of a whole planet looking for someone who’d seen the bad guy. Come on, put some limits on your power and show me your writing chops by having your characters work with what they have. They ought to have to sweat a bit. Give her one power not 10, not whatever power she needs just at that moment.

The hero was a bit under developed. There was no POV from him. He showed signs that maybe he thought he was dominate but the author didn’t do him justice. I liked him but I would have liked him to be more fully realized.

So on the whole it was an entertaining read and I felt like it was a solid SFR effort. I’m thinking this author can only get better.

An elite Jurasu Roja of the Psi Police Corps, Maurra Vinish-Nahood couldn't stand Kronners, the barbarous little cretins. She liked them even less when they interrupt the few moments of relaxation she was enjoying in a bar before returning to headquarters. Fortunately, before she had to take care of the disturbance, an Ellinod male tossed them out on their ears. Later, on her way back to her ship, she encounters the same Ellinod, now at the mercy of the Kronners. Automatically, Maurra dives into the melee, completely unaware it was a trap. When she wakes up, naked, locked in a cell on a Kronner ship and unable to use her psionic powers, she discovers the Ellinod has been captured as well.

Maurra and Kuvma Safan are horror-stricken when a bodiless voice informs them they were to have sex for the entertainment of his subscribing audience or die where they stood. Laws prohibit inter-species fornication, laws that both of them are bound to follow and uphold, but given the choice of breaking the law or accepting death, they really have only one choice...it's life at any cost. But sex for a human and Ellinod is a daunting undertaking. Maurra isn't short, but the top of her head barely reaches Safan's muscular pectorals. When she places her hand palm to palm with his, the tips of her fingers barely reach the first knuckle of his fingers. He can enclose her entire neck in one hand, his thumb meeting his middle finger, and his male attributes are just as daunting.

The last thing Maurra expects is to enjoy sex with the hulking humanoid, not to mention such gentle tenderness and care from him that it brings tears to her eyes. Bonding through their forced sex, they make their escape, only to have a whole new set of challenges arise as the law they broke to save their lives changes their lives forever.

Because Captive Surrender is Linda Mooney's first book with Carina Press, I've seen several reviewers mistakenly think she's a “new” author. She's not; she's been around awhile. You can check out most of her work at Whiskey Creek Press Torrid. Having read most of her WCPT books, I have to say that Captive Surrender doesn't read like a typical Mooney novel. Particularly in the beginning, it feels as if scenes have been edited out, scenes that might have given more depth to the characters before dumping them into the main storyline. Nevertheless, this is a great book. Ms. Mooney gives readers absolutely the hottest sex scenes she's ever written. I'm still fanning myself, and I finished reading the book last night! There is one scene of violent sex between Maurra and Safan that reveals a lot about his people. The scene is well done despite its violence, but be prepared for it.

Like a well-cut diamond, Maurra seems a bit too hard, cold, and flawless when we first meet her, and my first impression of Safan was even worse. I thought he was dumb and ugly. Since I didn't refresh my mind on what to expect by re-reading the blurb before launching into the story, it took me awhile to realize he was the hero and not a supporting character. He didn't strike me as hero material...at least, not at first. But once I did, I thought referring to him as a “creature” was a bit unpalatable. He is humanoid, although I must say the cover artist entirely missed capturing his likeness. He's basically the Hulk, with gray, mottled skin. And then there are his wildly erogenous horns. He may not be particularly cute by human standards, but he's a gentle giant...a real sweetie. You won't finish this novel without falling madly in love with him, despite his looks, especially if you love dreamy green eyes.

Despite my debatable impressions of the book's beginning, Captive Surrender develops into a sterling keeper and ends, leaving the reader (at least it did me), wanting more. I'd love to see Ms. Mooney turn Maurra and Safan's odyssey into a continuing saga. I'd really like to see where they go in the future and how they – and perhaps their eventual children – end up.