Scan barcode
A review by tani
Hostage to Pleasure by Nalini Singh
4.0
After swearing to myself that I was going to stick to my own rules about reading ebooks only sparingly, here I am again, devouring a Psy-Changeling book. In this installment, we get the story of Ashaya and Dorian. On the surface, Ashaya seems to be the perfect Psy, brilliant and fully ensconced in Silence. However, there's far more to her than meets the eye, as Dorian finds out when he becomes responsible for her protection after she defects, exposing some of the Council's darkest secrets in the process. But is it enough to help Dorian overcome his hatred for the Psy?
Every time that I pick one of these books up, I'm convinced that this is going to be the one that gets repetitive and boring. But it seems like the Psy-Changeling series hits the tropes that I enjoy very well, and I'm nowhere near getting tired of them. I think it helps that Ashaya is actually quite different from Sascha and Faith, in that her motivations for keeping to Silence are very different from theirs. She's a far more emotionally connected character than any of the other Psy we've met so far, despite her outward seeming, which makes her relationship with Dorian feel just different enough from the romances that we've had before to be satisfying. There are also some interesting parallels between her situation and Dorian's that make their connection more intriguing that I might have otherwise expected.
This book also advances the world-building and plotting quite a bit. Ashaya's work was very important to the Council, so when she exposes it, it sets a lot of events in motion. We start to see additional factions within the Psy and the humans, as well as meeting some more of the Changeling players who I imagine will play a larger part in later books. I think one of the things that keeps me coming back to this series so readily is the way that they're showing the beginnings of a revolution, another trope that I'm very much into. Romance and politics? I am in.
Every time that I pick one of these books up, I'm convinced that this is going to be the one that gets repetitive and boring. But it seems like the Psy-Changeling series hits the tropes that I enjoy very well, and I'm nowhere near getting tired of them. I think it helps that Ashaya is actually quite different from Sascha and Faith, in that her motivations for keeping to Silence are very different from theirs. She's a far more emotionally connected character than any of the other Psy we've met so far, despite her outward seeming, which makes her relationship with Dorian feel just different enough from the romances that we've had before to be satisfying. There are also some interesting parallels between her situation and Dorian's that make their connection more intriguing that I might have otherwise expected.
This book also advances the world-building and plotting quite a bit. Ashaya's work was very important to the Council, so when she exposes it, it sets a lot of events in motion. We start to see additional factions within the Psy and the humans, as well as meeting some more of the Changeling players who I imagine will play a larger part in later books. I think one of the things that keeps me coming back to this series so readily is the way that they're showing the beginnings of a revolution, another trope that I'm very much into. Romance and politics? I am in.