Slave to Sensation

Author: Nalini Singh
Published: September 5, 2006 (Berkley)
Category: Paranormal Romance
Rating: 7/10

Singh has created a futuristic world (though not heavy on future technology so that it may as well be an alternate reality) where there are three types of humanoids. There are the Psy, which are humans with varying types of psychic powers (i.e. telekinetic, telepathic, teleporting, etc.). Then there are the Changelings, which are humans with the ability to change to a particular animal form. There are different clans that represent a multitude of species (i.e. DarkRiver is a leopard clan and SnowDancers are wolves). And then there are plain ol' humans. No special powers except their stupendous ho hum mundanity.

Anyways, Sascha Duncan is the daughter of a powerful Psy council member. She believes she's defective, as all Psy have been trained to feel zero emotion, and she's got all these feelings that she's had to hide all her life. After over two decades of this hiding, her shields are starting to fall apart, and being introduced to Lucas Hunter, head of the DarkRiver Changeling clan, doesn't help her situation at all. He's all about feelings and oozes sensuality and he and Sascha are having a hard time staying unattracted to each other.

Lucas has entered into a business deal with the Duncans and Sascha is to be the liaison. Normally, Changelings would avoid dealing with the Psy, but a serial murderer smelling like a Psy has been killing young Changeling women. When working with Sascha in close quarters, Lucas finds that she's unlike any Psy he's ever known or heard of, seeing that she displays emotions (though she tries to hide them), and she also has the hots for him.

Upon learning about the supposed serial murderer Psy, Sascha doesn't want to believe it, but she comes across information that there have been dozens of murderers amongst the Psy. The Council quietly takes care of the problems, erasing the minds of the less important criminals and controlling the more important ones by supplying them with fresh victims. The council hides these crimes so they can continue perpetuating the idea that suppressing all emotion is the way to live. With this knowledge, Sascha decides to help the Changelings and she figures it's a suicide mission anyways to hack into the Psy mind network (sort of like Professor X on X-Men!) and they'll kill her when they find out she's "defective."

I really like the way Singh writes and I loooooooved Lucas. He was a great alpha male character without being overly macho. I think the fact that there was an animal instinct behind all of his alpha male actions tempered the manliness. I didn't like Sascha very much as a heroine though. Too much of this "Woe is me, I'm broken and refuse to think that there might be a way to live through this," like Peter Parker.

Something I really noticed though was a similarity to some elements of Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy. At the end, they say that the new network of minds created with Sascha's help looks like brighly colored stars in the night sky, some shining more brightly than others. That's very much like the different colored jewels people wore in Bishop's world, and the different colors indicated the levels of power. Sascha also identified people based on their "stars" of Psy power, like when Jaenelle identified Surreal because she was the only gray-jeweled witch in the realm. Anyways, if you've read Anne Bishop, you won't have problems grasping this world created by Singh.