North Bound by Cynthia Sax
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A mission-focused cyborg battles a captivating and dramatic distraction.
North Bound
***
North, the second-in-command of a cyborg crew, has two priorities—he has to explore and collect data on Balazoid Minor, a small planet in their sector, and he must bring his three-being team back to the ship alive and fully functional.
When he encounters his brash, bravado-wielding female, the one being genetically designed for him, he recognizes her for what she is—a distraction that might get him and his brethren killed. He WILL claim her, but only on his terms, when his mission is complete and everyone he is responsible for protecting is safe.
Myrina the Magnificent is the best warrior on her planet and possibly the universe. She has captured an unparalleled fourteen males for her all-female tribe. Once she has secured the fifteenth male, she will be a legend. Her name will live forever. She’ll earn the undying adoration of her sisters. Glory will be hers.
The male in her sights—and in her snare—is a huge, gray-skinned, blue-eyed cyborg with a skill for war and lips designed for kissing. One emotionally charged battle is all it takes for Myrina to realize she wants North for herself. She won’t share his caresses with anyone.
Their forbidden love might be destined to be, but it won’t be easy to maintain. Myrina will have to fight her sisters, an all-powerful male-eating plant, and her cyborg’s unbending will to make North hers and hers alone.
Great characters including a sentient plant named Steve!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💜💖
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍🌎
Character development: 😟🤭😤☺️🥰
The Hero: North – he is a D model cyborg and is second in command on his warship. He is military through and through, from his polished boots to his pristine uniform and posture. He is an example to the rest of the men on the space exploration mission. He was a bit emotionally damaged when the men didn’t include him in their conversations, but that was more about his position than his personality. Though since the captain found his mate, he hasn’t been communicating with North as much either. Their mission was to document the details of every planet in the cyborg-controlled sector. The Planet they were exploring next was Balazoid Minor.
The heroine: Myrina the Magnificent – her tribe was all females and she was a Dreck. A Dreck is a genetic deviation within the Balazoid warriors. Dreck’s were easily notifiable by their soft hair rather than tentacle-like verme on their skulls. Dreck’s were not allowed to procreate, so Myrina decided if she couldn’t have love, she would have the adulation of her people. The female warriors in the tribe would often go out in search of males to capture and return to the tribe for breeding. Myrina had already captured more than all other females and finding one more would be the icing on the cake and put her in the history books.
The Story: – North was leading a three-man team to catalog the planet. He chose Truth and Dissent to join him and they landed on the planet. Their exploration mission was given to them by Power, the leader of the cyborg council. Apparently, Homeland, the main planet where the cyborgs reside is getting close to overcrowding and they are checking out the rest of the planets in their sector to see if any will sustain life and be good for them to claim as their own.
I liked this book from the start. It was hilarious to me when North picked his two teammates and one of their women wanted to come along. North had to explain to them how the fact that they would all protect her since she was a smaller, weaker, human female would be exactly the problem because it would slow the team down and put them all at further risk. Of course, when she said she would then stay on the ship, her mate decided he would as well, which frustrated North to no end. But eventually she told her mate that he should go and North had his small team ready.
Myrina and her tribe were every bit as fascinating as the cyborgs. She was known as the great giver of life since she captured the males that were used for breeding. She was treated as a celebrity as she walked through the streets of her village even though she was a Dreck. Myrina’s enemy is the Taker of Life, and next in line for the throne. Her sisters want her to be challenge for that position, but Myrina can never be queen anyway and can’t take the thought of killing all the male babies that are born and killing the males when her sisters are done with them. Their ‘god’ is a sentient plant named Steve and he doesn’t allow any males to exist other than himself. He is also a jerk.
“While we’re waiting, we should review the rules we’ve both agreed upon.” That had taken quite a bit of negotiation. On both of their parts.
Neither of them liked rules.
But they were necessary, or Steve would eat every male who set foot on the planet, and her kind would die out, unable to produce future generations.
The world building in this book was terrific. I like the idea of a sentient plant that takes of most of the world and keeps a little bit as his friends to draw others from space. I especially liked Steve’s origins and found that I really liked Steve as a character. Like all the other Cynthia Sax books I have read, there are many terrific characters in this book. I loved both Truth and Dissent and can’t wait to read their stories. Since I started this series with this book, I hope to go back to the prior books, but they weren’t available on my Libby app, so I will have to buy them at some point if I want to read them.
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