Bonded to the Stryxian

Stryxian Alien Warriors, Book 1

By: Ella Blake

Narrated by: Elle Sonali, Zachary Johnson

Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Humans made a deal with the Stryxian males: Help us defend Earth, and when the war is over, we’ll send you women to help rebuild your dying species.

Now, the war appears to be over and Trinity Bentzer’s number has been called in the lottery. Only, instead of winning a boatload of money, she’s getting some badass winged alien she’s never met. Trin’s not thrilled to be shipped off and matched up, until she meets Raig. Maybe she hit the jackpot, after all.

Commander Raig Thanor’s job is to supervise the females’ move to their holding chambers until they are sent to their final matches, but the moment he meets Trinity, he knows she’s his. If only claiming her didn’t risk sparking a war within his own people.

This is book one of the Stryxian Alien Warrior series but can be listened to alone with no cliffhangers and no cheating. It includes Stranded with the Stryxian, a bonus story.

©2021 Ella Blake (P)2021 Podium Audio

Audiobook with a novella included!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💚❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍🌏
Character development: 😠😘🤓🥰
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration

The heroine: Trinity Bentzer - when the alien Morr’ta attacked Earth, all was thought to be lost before an alliance between humans and the stryxians was brokered. The stryxian race was dying due to low birth rates and hardly any females being born. The leaders of Earth told them that for helping defeat the Morr’ta, they would hold a lottery and human females whose number came up would be mated to stryxian males. Trinity was a war veteran and was being retired since the war was over, when her number comes up in the lottery.

The Hero: Commander Raig Thanor - He is a stryxian and was the leader of the stryxian warrior force during the war. He is now in charge of helping out the human females until they are sent to one of the stryxian settlements to be mated. However, as soon as he sees Trinity, he knows she is his fated mate. Stryxians were seven foot tall and muscular and easy on the eyes. They had fine scales on their skin and had thick leathery wings, and their eyes were mostly black.

The Story: Trinity has chronic pain and a limp from a war wound, which she is a bit self conscious about. Especially since she got the wound on the one mission she botched and which she considered her greatest failure. She planned to move to a quiet rural place, not wanting to head to a city where she felt she would have to try to hide her limp which caused her more pain.

Trinity was surprised to not only find that her number came up, but to find that she was going to the outer zone of the galaxy and her military superiors wanted her to spy for them since humans had not been allowed to the zone on the edge of Morr’ta territory. She didn’t want to do it, but was given no choice. Though Raig knew immediately she was his even though he would be going against Stryxia’s rulers by claiming her.

I liked this book because Trinity was a strong female heroine yet she was vulnerable as well. Raig was a bit misogynistic at first and didn’t like humans all that well either. Although he was certainly an interesting character. The story was good as well. I liked the fact that it differed from a lot of other alien romance stories. Firstly in the fact that the stryxians needed females not because of a virus, but because of low birth rates, and that Earth had an abundance of females due to the war.

This book is told in dual points of view via dual narration and was narrated by Elle Sonali and Zachary Johnson. Zachary has a deep voice which is perfect for the 7 foot tall muscular alien. I really hate it when they have a male narrator with a weak or high voice when the male character wouldn’t fit that voice at all. Elle has a clear, yet feminine voice which matched Trinity perfectly as well.

Fantastic!

New series addiction. Excellent strong women who can depend on their hot honorable Stryxian guys. This has adventure and super steamy stuff too.

Interesting story with spice

I really enjoyed this. The story was interesting and the futuristic technology was mostly believable. I also really liked the novella at the end! I only wish that the male narrator did all the male voices and that the female narrator did all of the female ones instead of having them take turns for certain chapters. I'm sure that's way more work to coordinate but it would have been my preference.

Interesting characters, story & well performed

This review is for the series, rather than just this book. It’s 6 books, I think. Fun storyline and characters that develop over the series. I like how each relationship and story is unique. She’s good with dialogue. The actor performances are also really good. They managed to make an identifiable and believable voice for each character. Steamy, not cozy -which is my preference.

Off to a good start

The storyline is similar to other books in the genre but entertaining. I love strong hot males that are kind and caring to their females. Females can be a bit brass but glad it doesn’t continue this way for long periods. Narrators did a good job with characters.

Another favorite

Even though this is yet another fated mates romance, I really liked this one. The characters were likable and there was a nice balance between plot and sexy times. The dialogue was great I found myself laughing and snorting right along with characters.
One big bonus was the strong female. Even after encountering the “golden dick” she remained a strong woman. So many times the strong female lead becomes a doormat or suddenly insecure. And I throw up my hands and say wtf.
NOT this time ❤️ girl power!
The narration was great.

Great audio to a good story!

I am an avid reader of many of these stories and had read the entire Stryxian series by Ella Blake. When I received the email about new audios coming, I was happy to re-acquaint myself with the series! I am an artist and I listen as I paint or as I drive to events.
This was a great rendition and the male narrator, Zachary Johnson can read a story to me anytime :) His voice is as sexy as the passages he read in the book! It must be hard to switch from the obviously male voice to the female voice within the same chapter but he does an excellent job.
The female narrator, Elle Sonata, does an excellent job on her female characters but is not quite as adept at switching into the male roles. Regardless, their reading deserves a 5 star rating! The tone and inflection of a narrator's voice is so important in an audio and both narrators possess mellow, non-grating voices. I have an occasional book that I love to re-read, but cannot stand to listen to again if a character is rendered in an incompatible voice! A good narrator brings the story to.life!
This audible rendition also included the novella of the lost Prince, and an excerpt from book 2.

Good but needed more

I did enjoy the story; however, the story was too short needed more story development.

Stryxian , allies and bondmates.

I approached MS E. Blake's novel hoping it would deliver a new, good story line on a fairly used take of alien meets human woman, desperate for her to help save their dying race, by breeding with the alien males, as the alien woman are dying and they need the human woman to repopulate their species. MS Blake scored a winner.
The story moved. along at a good pace, gave believable male and female protagonists, who connected emotionally and believable with the reader. Basically kick=ass warriors, and sassy, confident females who's on his own are equal in spirits and, training to stand beside her bond mate , with loyalty, integrity, and loving faithfulness.
Doing all of the above in a fresh, confident exploration into a world with fun androids, greedy politicians, and powerful beings or mad Religious advisors ( who are really pseudo politicians and advisors. )Huummm! This seems vaguely familiar to todays political foul-ups. Wish we had a few Stryxian warriors to swoop in and clean up the mess we must live with.
Loved the characters. the story line and MS Blake's adept integration of characters to keep the readers turning every page in anticipation of what was next. Thank you MS Blake, I'm ordering the next book now.

Naughty hehe

I'm Glad I checked out the audiobook. :) it was both engaging and fun. I liked it.