Breathing Vapor by Cynthia Sax

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Vapor is the most advanced cyborg the Humanoid Alliance has ever developed. He’s a finely honed weapon, a warrior without parallel, half man and half machine. No lock can contain him. No being can stop him. Whatever he wants, he takes. 

He wants Mira Breazeal, the Designer’s daughter. 

She’s his one temptation, his sexy target. Vapor shouldn’t crave her caresses, steal her kisses, make her scream with ecstasy. The cyborgs want her dead and they would question his loyalty if he didn’t kill her. The humans would shoot him on sight if he dared to touch her. 

Their love is forbidden. Their desire could be lethal. One human and one cyborg will risk everything for a moment of passion.

Breathing Vapor

Mira the Merciless meets her mate!

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💜❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 😟🤭😤😘🥰

The heroine: Mira – she is the daughter of the designer, the mastermind behind the whole cyborg program. When she was small, she tried everything to get her father to love her, but nothing worked. As a child she saw how the world worked when her mother was betrayed and killed by those around her. She knew from that time how she needed to act. In reality, she had a soft, warm heart but she knows that is what got her mother killed, so instead she became Mira the Merciless.

The Hero: Vapor – he is a K model cyborg. The most advanced cyborgs in existence, the K models looked like humans with tan skin rather than the grey skin that usually designated them as cyborgs. Vapor was the most lethal of all the K models. He was built for battle and is as stealthy as any expert assassin.

The Story: Mira knows how she has to act in public and in front of the Humanoid Alliance. She has to pretend to be as cold-hearted and cruel as her father and the worst of the guards. Though she never outrightly tortures any being, she has the sharpest tongue of anyone and uses it to show her dominance.

While behind the scenes Mira does what she can to help. She berates any cyborg who is not up tho their grueling standards, and in doing so, often saves them from a beating by Hun, the final stage trainer. Also, she often sells cyborgs to offworlders for credits and in doing that saves them from decommissioning. Though the cyborgs don’t see it that way, they see it as her avarice for the credits, and think the only reason she sells those slated for decommission is because nobody will miss those cyborgs and she can get away with it.

When the cyborgs start planning an escape, they want to kill all their tormentors, but they can’t because if they kill everyone, then the Humanoid Alliance will think K models are dangerous to humans and will decommission all K models in other sectors. So, they decide to kill one person to get their revenge. They can’t kill Hun because he would just be replaced within days, they can’t kill the designer because the anti-cyborg contingent within the Humanoid Alliance will think they have won, and all cyborgs will be decommissioned.

The cyborgs decide on Mira the Merciless, not only because they hate her but because they think her death will hurt the designer. Vapor is chosen to make sure Mira deserves death as some cyborgs see the things she does as not so bad, since she is saving some from being decommissioned and from harsh punishments. Vapor has always been attracted to Mira and he thinks of her as his woman, so he knows if she is deserving of death then he must be the one to kill her.

I have really liked every one of Cynthia Sax’s Cyborg books I have read so far. The different series are all set in the same world, though each book has its own separate yet intricate storyline. I have read a bunch of them so far and not all in order, but I really like the idea of cyborgs. They are sentient beings, basically just enhanced humans, fighting to be treated as more than just machines. It is a good base for any story and there is always a ton of action and adventure, steamy liaisons and they have something similar to fated mates. What more could you want?

I also love that cyborgs can do so many things that regular humans can’t, like talk to each other through transmissions where humans can’t hear them. They are super strong, have long lives, are self healing for the most part, and much more. This story had the added conflict of the fact that Mira’s public persona was so terrible (or should I say Merciless?). It made for a good story and made her a very strong and intelligent heroine.

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