A review by eesh25
Hostage to Pleasure by Nalini Singh

5.0

Dorian has always been one of the most interesting characters in this series. He lost his sister to a sociopathic, Psy serial killer and is scarred from that experience still. He's also a leopard changeling who's lantent, meaning he can't shift into a leopard. But he hasn't let his latent ability stop him from becoming, probably, the most lethal member of DarkRiver pack. He's a sniper, a hacker, he's great with knives and hand-to-hand combat, he's really fucking smart, and he even knows how to fly a fucking plane. He's awesome.

So you can understand why I was so excited to read his book. And thankfully, the other protagonist is also very interesting. Ashaya is an M-Psy (medical), one of the most brilliant scientists in the world and even though she's broken Silence, she has to pretend that she hasn't in order to survive, and to protect her son from the Psy council.

Dorian and the others manage to get her son, Keenan, away from the Psy and out of the PsyNet by faking his death, and Ashaya manages to escape on her own, but she's still connected to the PsyNet. Then there's the matter of  her twin sister, Amara, who believes Ashaya to be her property and will kill anyone who threatens to take Ashaya away from her. She can also get into Ashaya's head (which is partially related to proximity) and wants to kill Keenan, so distance from her needs to be maintained.

Of course, Dorian doesn't know about Amara and her particular brand of crazy. He thinks that Ashaya is fully Silent and given the fact that his sister was killed by one just like her, he's disgusted by the attraction he feels toward her. He feels as if he's betraying his sister by feeling the way he does. And yet he can't not help Ashaya.  He loves her son. He can see that she's likely working against the council to stop them from enslaving their own race. And despite how it looks, he feels as if maybe she's not truly Silent. Why else would she risk her life to save her son? He can't figure her out but he will keep trying until he does, especially if it leads to the discovery that she's a spy. Because then he'll kill her.

All this, Ashaya and Amara, the council being its usual self, Dorian and his many problems, and the fact that the world is getting closer and closer to war... it makes for a fast-paced, exciting, and very important read (for the series). I mean, even the puny humans seem to be stepping up their game (in the wrong way, of course).

A whole lot of shit is going down, and this is probably the best book in the series so far.

One last thing I wanna add. This book includes a new dynamic, thanks to Amara. Amara isn't evil. She was never conditioned into Silence because she never felt in the first place. Most of the things she does, even the horrifying ones, have a logical reason. Where Silence is unnatural, she isn't. She's a gray area, not good, not bad. And it's brilliant that Nalini Singh introduced this aspect of the world, of people, and did it so well.

Basically, I love Nalini Singh and this novel.