Characters: Tia and Rem’eb

I think I’m done with this whole series, ever since the first book I have not been liking the direction of what Ruby Dixon has been doing with this new series. I have a whole lot to say about this, so buckle up buttercups. 

In the last book Tia and R’Jaal get kidnapped by the society that lives under the fruit caves (the first book in the series), a society that no one knew about until the starting of this series. 
R’Jaal had immediately gotten resonance with a human clone, I felt for the female character in that book but unfortunately, I didn’t like the book.

With this one Tia was put in a different area in the underground society. None of the people knew that she was there, because the Chief was this incompetent leader who wanted to fear every little thing. He separated the males from the females, because the females had gotten sicker and a lot of them died off from this sickness years ago. Rem’eb is the Chief’s son, and he can see that his father is going through some type of depression, but they’re not doing anything to change their situation. So Tia escapes with Rem’eb and they meet up with R’Jaal and his mate and three other people from the underground society. They get out and Tia knocks Rem’eb out in the head, he’s of course upset about it when he wakes up, but forgets about it easily because they finally resonate. But throughout this whole fucking book, Rem’eb wants to go back to his society to help his people (and I completely understand that) but the constant miscommunication because she had a language chip and he didn’t, so it was this constant back and fucking forth. It drove me crazy, plus this book was so freaking boring, it wasn’t until the 70% point of the book where it started to get better.


*Let me explain about my history with Tia*:

When she first was introduced in the Icehome series, I wasn’t a fan of her character and I disliked her. Now don’t get me wrong, I can understand that years ago she was kidnapped as a teenager, we first were introduced to her when she was around 16/17 so of course teenagers are going to be a bit immature and annoying. For her she was very very immature, and she didn’t want to listen to the women at all when they had told her that she can’t flirt with these men, because they are different than human men back on earth, so the alien men didn’t understand what she was doing (because their CULTURE IS DIFFERENT!). 
This seems to be a conflict within the reader base, some of the readers (like myself) felt like Tia needed to listen to the older women, and other readers wanted to infantilize Tia, because she was a teenager and what? she shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions because of her age? Get fucked!
Tia needed to be moved to Croatoan, because of how she was acting. I’m glad she was moved. Whatever behavior she had is because RUBY DIXON made the character that way. 

Now that it’s been a few years since we (the reader base) has seen Tia, 
I will say I did like that Tia looked like she has grown up and matured, she was still a bit immature (understandable, because she’s what, 20 now?). So I can sympathize with her character a bit more, and because she stopped with the constant flirting. Plus she was helping the others with how to make a fire and whatnot, so she was showing the things she learned, and could be helpful towards the new residents. 

BUT now that she has matured enough, I didn’t like the direction of this story, I felt bad for Tia because all she wants is a man who wants her for herself, so when Rem’eb sees her and says she’s beautiful and seems to be obsessed with her, I liked seeing that for her, but his freaking duty to his stupid father really annoyed me. I can understand that he wanted to protect his people, but there needed to be a better communication to where he could tell her that he wants her there with him in the underground, and he wants her to stay to help build a better society than what they have now. None of that happened until the 85% point, but by then I just wanted the book to end. 
So unfortunately, it made Tia still look a bit immature because she wanted him, but it looked like he didn’t want her enough, and then it made it to where she looked selfish and he looked noble wanting to go back to help his society. 
There was a part at the 85% point where the author tried to get us (the reader) to sympathize with Tia, when Ruby Dixon should have done that towards the beginning of the book. This section here:

(“Do you know I was sent away from the Icehome tribe? I was young and I flirted with all the single guys… and they flirted back. The attention was so nice. God. For the first time I felt like the center of the universe. But then they also got jealous of each other and started fights, so I was sent away because they decided that guys that hunt and contribute were worth keeping and I wasn’t. My voice grows bitter, and I realize that yes, I’m still resentful of the entire situation. I haven’t forgotten, haven’t forgiven. “I went to Croatoan and lived with strangers, and they were so lovely and kind to me. They didn’t make me feel like I was a problem. Like I was some beach Jezebel”.
And yet they still weren’t my people. Everyone at Croatoan was friendly and wonderful, but they had all known each other for so long, had bonds together that I couldn’t possibly understand, and no matter how much they try to include me, I still felt like the odd one out. I was the only unmated woman, the only unmated person of my age, and the only stranger. No matter how I tried, I still felt like the odd one out.
It’s why I returned to Icehome. I wanted to see if it felt more like home than being at Croatoan for four years, or if I’d always feel like the one that didn’t belong. 
“It was wrong of them to reject you”, Rem’eb tells me fervently. “Any male would be proud to claim you as his mate, and have you at his side”. 
I shake my head. I don’t know if he’d understand about my childhood of boarding schools, of Summer camps away from home and nannies because my parents were never around. I never lacked for pretty clothes, or the newest phones. Just…attention. Affection. Maybe that’s why I need it so badly. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much when Rem’eb doesn’t see me.)

 This is the point in the book where I understood her point of view, but no one in the other villages were to blame for how they treated her. They aren’t mind readers. If she would have told them that, then I’m sure they would’ve treated her a little differently. This is why communication matters the most in any book. Ruby Dixon chose not to give Tia enough depth of a character in the previous books, and this is why the fan base is so divided on how they feel about Tia. 

It seems like Ruby Dixon just couldn’t give this character of Tia a proper happily ever after. It almost would have been better if someone had come down in their spaceship, and decided to take Tia with them and they dropped her off at Risda lll when she was a teenager. She could have had that time to grow up, have her own place and the custodians on that planet could have kept an eye on her. Since Risda lll is more of a farming planet, and Not Hoth isn’t really a place to start off with, especially as being a teenager. Adults being dropped there worked better, so hopefully Ruby Dixon has learned her lesson and not create a character like Tia again. 

It wasn’t until the very end where I actually liked the direction of the story.