S08.19: Ice Planet Barbarians

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

Fated Mates

Arts, Society & Culture, Books, Documentary

4.9 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2026

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s a snowstorm, Jen’s from Chicago, and we’re feeling extra qualified to talk about Ice Planet Barbarians! It’s the book, and the series that took the world by storm back in 2015, and we’re revisiting the absolute powerhouse it was then, before it launched an entire subgenre of romance and changed the romance landscape. We’re also talking about Ruby Dixon’s clear skill, her obvious love of the genre, and all the ways she makes us both laugh and sigh.

If you have a favorite IPB book and you want to talk about it, come find us (and other romance lovers) on the Fated Mates Discord, which you can access by joining our patreon. Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Our next read along (in March) is Sincerely, Your Inconvenient Wife by Julia Wolf. Find it in ebook or paperback, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

Notes

Horsepower is definitely the same as measuring the weight of ice in golden retriever pounds.
There’s lot of ways to support the people of Minnesota right now. A good clearinghouse site is Stand With Minnesota. You can also order directly from area bookstores: Tropes and Trifles, Black Garnet Books, or Birchbark Books, or use Bookshop.Org for any number of Minnesota stores. Monarca If you are looking to support whistle production, You can also support other Romancelandia efforts. Bree (from Kit Rocha) is part of a team of people that have printed over 150k whistles this month alone! Romancing the Vote will also be back up this summer, so look for information on that. Along with Monarca, Indivisible is also holding trainings to teach people how to document and record ICE.
Get ready, Derek Craven Day is nigh!

It’s February, so lots of upcoming romance events to check out!

Feb 12, 2026: Jen will be at Babe’s Sports Bar to discuss a WNBA romance, Rooting Interest.
Feb 14, 2026: the Free Library of Philadelphia will be holding a Heated Rivalry Event with Xio Axelrod, Rosie Danan & Joanna Shupe.
Feb 21, 2026: Jen will be in Romeoville to discuss Romance.
Feb 21, 2026: An online Heated Rivalry Trivia event.
March 7, 2026: Sarah will join a group of historical romance authors for Ballrooms & Beyond, a daylong celebration of historical romance at Linden Place in Bristol, RI.

Oh, finally, some notes about Ice Planet Barbarians.

Our friend Dani Lacey was the host of Ice Planet Pod if you’re looking for read-alongs.
The final girl is a horror trope!
Our next read along is Sincerely, Your Inconvenient Wife by Julia Wolf. Find it in ebook or paperback, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

Sponsors

Blue Box Press, publishers of new special editions of:
Donna Grant’s Dragon Kings novellas
Jennifer L. Armentrout’s From Blood and Ash, featuring sprayed edges and embossed and glossy cover design elements; and
Heather Graham's Krewe of Hunter and Cafferty and Quinn novellas.
Learn more at TheBlueBoxPress.com.
RomantasyLetters, A new kind of romantic fantasy storytelling, delivered right to your door twice monthly. Use the code FATED to get 20% off your year's subscription. Learn more at RomantasyLetters.com.
Denise Williams, author of The Re-Do List, available in print, ebook and audiobook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.

Jennifer Vido

Simplicity by the Sea

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You know, Sarah, this is a great day for us to be recording Ice Planet Barbarians because I am literally living in that world.
0:10.1	Yeah. You're in a cold. You're in a cold thing.
0:13.2	I have the day off of school because of cold.
0:15.5	You have the day off of school. An ice storm is about to hit the American South.
0:19.4	Gosh. I mean, good luck to everybody down there because this is.
0:23.5	It's really scary.
0:25.2	I mean, everybody is trying, you know, in the week before a snowstorm, right now, you all will be listening to this after the snowstorm has hit.
0:34.3	So we don't know really what's happening.
0:36.4	But in the week before a snowstorm,
0:38.3	you know, they really make a meal out of it on news. Oh, yeah. And it's because they're like, what else? And I really think they all sit around in the newsrooms and they're like, what else can we tell people about this storm that we're not, we don't actually know what it's going to be yet. Sure. Right? Because it's like a hundred hours out. We know there's
0:54.9	going to be something, but like what will it be? And yesterday there was this threat going around a
1:00.0	screenshot from a newscast where they measured the weight of the ice in golden retrievers.
1:05.9	I was like, I really saw that and was like, is that AI?
1:12.6	Like, what happened there?
1:17.1	No, I showed it to Eric and everybody, if you follow Fated Mates anywhere on the internet,
1:20.7	and you should, you should follow us on threads and Instagram at Fated Mates pod and on blue sky at Fated Mates because periodically, Eric, well, no, not periodically.
1:25.7	Often, Eric will create an image related to the, the, well, no, not periodically. Often, Eric will create an image related to the podcast episode.
1:33.1	And, like, really, it doesn't get better than New Year's Milk and Eve.
1:36.5	But part of me understands it because it's like, if you live in with apologies to people who live in, our listeners who live in like Mississippi, you don't
1:45.2	spend a lot of time thinking about what ice weighs. Yeah, sure. Right. Like, for you, I say to you,
1:51.3	oh, the trees are going to be covered in a half an inch of ice. And you're like, well, how much,
1:56.8	what could it, what could it be? I've seen a half an inch before. It's one banana, Michael.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Fated Mates, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Fated Mates and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.