Ashes and Metal by Naomi Lucas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
No one messed with Gunner. No one.
Ashes and Metal
He was the Jackal, living chaos, the infamous Cyborg banned from civilized society. He was also the only Monster Hunter for the EPED who took the hard jobs, the under-the-table work. Jobs that often left a trail of blood and bones in their wake. When a pirate commandeers his ship, Gunner takes it upon himself to exact a revenge that will ignite a wildfire of rage, death, and torment upon those who made the mistake of taking what was rightfully his.
Elodie has spent most of her life pretending to be a boy to remain alongside her father in space. He’s the only family she has left. When the ship they worked on is attacked, she’s taken prisoner. Every day, she feared that her secret would be discovered—that she’s a woman alone amongst men. When a strange man is dragged into the cell next to hers, she realizes she was living on borrowed time.
He stared at her as if he knew her secret…
—
Warning: Ashes and Metal is a prison horror romance with explicit violence, strong language, and diabiolically heated scenes. Mature readers only.
Book five of Cyborg Shifters, same universe as Stranded in the Stars, every book is a standalone that only subtly builds off of the others.
“A pretty boy…or a beautiful girl.”
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🩵🖤❤️💜💚
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: ☺️😍🥰😁😋
The heroine: Elodie – she was raised by her father in space, he traveled from place to place taking jobs that were too dangerous for a woman, so she had been disguising herself as a boy from a young age. She is now tall and thin with very small breasts so that helps, but some of the men get an inkling at times, or they just like boys. However, after their last stint on a mining platform, they were captured by pirates and her dad tries to protect her by joining up with the cruel pirates.
The Hero: Gunner – he is a cyborg shifter. His other form is a jackal. He works as a monster hunter for the EPED (Earthian Planetary Exploration Division), and he is sent after the worst of the monsters in the Galaxy, many of which are human. The EPED gives him those jobs because he can handle them better than anyone else and because they don’t care if he comes back. He has been banned from everywhere around Earth and hangs out alone, with his droids on his ship in the far reaches of space.
The Story: After Elodie’s dad joins the ranks of the pirates, she is left in her own little cell in the brig. Surrounded by men in the other cells. She is starved much of the time, and she has to keep her secret no matter what. When the pirates find Gunner, he is knocked unconscious, and his ship is taken. Then he is put in the cell next to Elodie.
“It was a game of Russian roulette with his employers. It was easy for the EPED to put him on missions that were more likely to cause his death than not. He was expendable and always would be. But he was also an asset because he never. Fucking. Died.”
“No. No way. Cyborgs were a creation of the past, for a war that had ended before she was born. She knew about them, not as a reality, but as a legend. They went down in history like gladiators, cowboys, medieval knights. Existed once but no longer.”
I really liked this book. It had a good premise, a great story and some very steamy scenes. I liked the fact that they were prisoners for so long and though Gunner knew he would be able to escape, he had to stay long enough to find out where the pirates took his ship.
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