Visions of Heat

Author: Nalini Singh
Published: Marcy 2007 (Berkley)
Category: Paranormal Romance
Series: Psy-Changeling #2
Rating: 7/10

Visions of Heat continues from where Slave to Sensation left off. The Psy heroine is Faith Nightstar, a cardinal level F-Psy, which means she can see visions of the future. She was raised under Silence, the heartless Psy program that teaches all Psy not to feel emotion, lest their psychic powers get the best of them and bad things happen. But we all know, after STS that Silence was not successful and the Psy Council has been hiding the killers that have resulted from the program.

Faith, as a foreseer, thinks that insanity is inevitable. Apparently, they're really delicate and have to live in complete isolation from everyone and the more powerful the foreseer, the more this applies. Since she's the most powerful foreseer of her time, Faith has been living by herself since she was a child in a guarded house in the wilderness on the edge of DarkRiver territory. And this mysterious guarded house has attracted Vaughn D'Angelo's attention.

Lucky for him, Faith wants to meet Sascha Duncan, mate to Vaughn's pack leader, Lucas Hunter. Faith has been suffering visions of murder, which she shouldn't because Silence keeps foreseers from seeing such emotional visions. Their predictions are reserved for business dealings (which I found sort of unethical) only. Faith is afraid that she's going to crack under these horrific visions, although she seemed ready to crack over just about anything.

Vaughn's inner jaguar, apparently more developed than most changelings' animal alter-egos, wants to claim Faith, and he goes along with it. He keeps pushing Faith to her breaking point to make her stronger, and it's not like she's the only one who benefits. The more accustomed she becomes to touching and emotional interaction, the sooner Vaughn can take her to bed, which he eventually does.

I was enjoying the relationship between Vaughn and Faith more than the whole Psy murderer subplot. They catch the killer, but it was a little too easy and almost an afterthought in the storyline. I love Vaughan, our alpha male hero; Singh can definitely write an alpha male. Her heroines are lacking though. They're all fragile and about to break, and I'd really like to see a future story where we have a strong Psy female to start with. Faith did seem a bit braver than Sascha though, dropping out of the Psynet without any idea of the private web of stars that was created when Sascha dropped out in STS. Then again, she just figured she was going to die, so maybe it wasn't actually bravery. I guess Singh is trying to appeal to the audience that likes having everything taken care of by their man?