Burning Up Flint by Laurann Dohner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Flint is tall, gorgeous and dangerous. He’s a cyborg – the absolute ultimate alpha male. He takes what he wants and holds what is his. Mira is his now. He takes her aboard his ship and has her branded with his mark. He captured her, owns her, and she will serve his every need.
Burning Up Flint
Mira is instantly drawn to Flint, fascinated by his seductive appeal. The sex between them is smoking hot. Until she finds out he is a breeder, contracted to a dozen cyborg women, and she is no more than a possession.
Mira won’t share her cyborg and she belongs to no one – not even to a man who has captured her heart. She doesn’t know if cyborgs feel… anything. Can Flint love her? Mira is determined to find out, no matter how much trouble she makes for the big guy.
Reader Advisory: This book contains a sexy, voyeuristic bondage scene in which Flint generously demonstrates his sizzling skills for the benefit of another cyborg.
Cyborg Romance With Some Serious Red Flags
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💛
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎
Character development: 😋😀😍
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Solo Narration
Main Characters and Plot Overview
Mira is traveling back to Earth after working on a space station when her shuttle is intercepted by cyborgs who were believed to be gone. Flint is their leader, and from the moment he sees Mira, he decides she belongs to him. He takes her aboard his ship, has her branded with his mark, and expects her to accept being his property. The story makes it clear very early that Flint’s idea of claiming a woman is deeply tied to the cyborg culture and its rules, but that did not make it any easier for me to accept.
Mira is attracted to Flint, which complicates everything because she is simultaneously fighting against the loss of her freedom. She tries to escape rather than simply accepting her new situation, and I actually appreciated that she did not quietly surrender. Things take an even darker turn when Flint, angry over her rebellion, sells her to another cyborg. Because she already carries his mark, the other cyborg intends to use her and rent her out to others. That was a particularly difficult part of the story for me because Flint had spent so much time insisting that Mira was his, yet when she challenged him, he was willing to give her away.
Eventually, Mira and Flint have to confront what they actually mean to each other. The central question becomes whether Flint’s possessiveness is simply cyborg conditioning or whether he has developed genuine feelings for Mira.
Highlights and Limitations
There were definitely things I enjoyed. Mira has a stubborn streak that kept me invested in her, particularly when she refuses to accept Flint’s definition of their relationship. I liked watching her push back against the cyborg customs instead of simply accepting them because Flint was bigger, stronger, and in charge.
The attraction between them is intense, and there is plenty of steam throughout the story. There is also an interesting underlying question about whether cyborgs are capable of love and how their programming, culture, and experiences affect their emotions. That aspect of Flint’s character was more interesting to me than the dominant alpha behavior.
However, the property storyline was a major problem for me. I know this is intentionally written as a dark, possessive romance, but I struggled with Flint treating Mira as something he could claim, mark, and ultimately give or sell to someone else. His decision to hand her over after she tried to escape was especially hard for me to move past. I also wanted more development between them before the emotional resolution. Some of the later declarations of love felt less convincing to me because Flint’s earlier actions had created such a huge gap between what he said and what I felt he had actually shown Mira.
Narration
Mindy Kennedy narrates the audiobook, which runs approximately 6 hours and 43 minutes. I thought her performance worked particularly well with the emotional swings of the story. She handles Mira’s fear, frustration, attraction, and determination without making her sound weak, which was important because Mira spends a large portion of the book fighting against a situation she never chose.
Kennedy also gives Flint the appropriately commanding presence needed for his character. His scenes with Mira have a noticeable intensity, particularly when their attraction clashes with the power imbalance between them. Other listeners have specifically praised Kennedy’s performance, and I can understand why she has become closely associated with the Cyborg Seduction audiobooks.
Final Thoughts
This was a complicated listen for me. I enjoy alien and cyborg romances, and I was intrigued by the premise and by Mira’s determination to maintain some control over her own life. I also liked the question of whether Flint could learn that wanting someone and owning someone are not the same thing.
Unfortunately, Flint’s treatment of Mira made it difficult for me to fully embrace their romance. The moment he sells her to another cyborg was the biggest stumbling block for me, and I found myself wishing the story had given Flint more opportunity to demonstrate that Mira mattered to him before putting her through that situation.
There is definitely heat, action, possessiveness, and an unusual science-fiction romance here, and I can see why the book has attracted readers who enjoy a very dominant hero and darker relationship dynamics. For me, though, the property aspect overshadowed much of the romance. I finished the audiobook more interested in Mira’s strength and her struggle for independence than I was in Flint as a romantic hero.
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