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A review by friends2lovers
Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
3.5
This is the first book in Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series which revolves around the Psy—people with various psychic abilities like telepathy and telekinesis—and their adversaries, the changelings—human-animal shapeshifters. In Slave to Sensation Sascha, a Psy, forms an unlikely alliance with Lucas, a panther changeling, when she agrees to help track down a Psy serial killer who has been targeting female Changelings for the past 7 years.
Through a program called Silence, the Psy are conditioned from birth to eradicate all their feelings. Silence didn’t really work on Sascha and over the years she’s built up mental shields to hide her ‘flawed’ psyche. In the beginning, Sascha is emotionally guarded, wary of affection, and believes herself broken. This is typically where a hero’s arc starts in a M/F romance novel; it’s the heroine who breaks down his walls and encourages him to feel and love. It was refreshing to have this trope reversed; Lucas is more in touch with his feelings and he affectionately provokes Sascha out of her shell.
So later, when Sascha embraces her empath abilities and matures emotionally while Lucas struggles with his emotional control, it was a little disappointing. Their dynamic went from atypical to falling in line with gender norms, albeit with a supernatural twist. As an E-Psy and ‘healer of the mind’, she’s shouldering a lot of emotional labor in her relationship with Lucas as well as with the pack. I hope later books introduce male healers and E-Psy, because I don’t like the idea of these inherent abilities being passed down to females only. The powers that E-Psy possess are really cool, especially the potential to heal the trauma of others! It seems like a bummer, though, to constantly manage the emotions of other people (mainly male shapeshifters with tempers).
Overall, I really enjoyed the romance, I just liked the earlier bits best. The shared dreams were particularly effective at forging a believable connection between them, before either character was ready for that in real life. It’s like a heightened version of the trope where dreaming about another person either makes them realize their attraction to the person or allows them to act on feelings they aren’t supposed to have. Because neither character realizes that they’re dreamingtogether, their subsequent struggle to continue acting normally around each other is especially entertaining. I also liked that the mating bond was not immediately evident and it took time and effort to develop and accept.
I liked the earlier bits of plot and worldbuilding more than the latter, too. The culture of the Psy and the inner workings of the PsyNet were intriguing. Singh’s writing struck a good balance between being concise and descriptive. I never felt like I was drowning in exposition nor was I left wanting more explanations. Unfortunately, because Sascha’s abilities are all mental, the climax of the plot was internal, too. Sascha going into the PsyNet to trap and identify the serial killer was the one part of the book that I found difficult to grasp conceptually. Then the physical confrontation and action occurs off the page with different characters. It was just a bit underwhelming to have an external, high-stakes conflict resolved through internal strategic mental maneuvering.
3.5 stars. The first half is completely engrossing and fast-paced. The second half took me longer to get through as the things I liked about the romance and plot shifted in a different direction. Still, I’m pretty eager to continue the series and am curious about how the overarching plot will progress.
EDIT 04/13/2021: Yesterday, the Heaving Bosoms podcast posted their recap episode for this and I highly recommend checking it out. I wholeheartedly agree with Erin about the changelings' aversion to M/M platonic PDA within the pack, despite having no qualms about M/F PDA. I kid you not, I wrote a paragraph about this in my original review but decided to cut it for length.
Through a program called Silence, the Psy are conditioned from birth to eradicate all their feelings. Silence didn’t really work on Sascha and over the years she’s built up mental shields to hide her ‘flawed’ psyche. In the beginning, Sascha is emotionally guarded, wary of affection, and believes herself broken. This is typically where a hero’s arc starts in a M/F romance novel; it’s the heroine who breaks down his walls and encourages him to feel and love. It was refreshing to have this trope reversed; Lucas is more in touch with his feelings and he affectionately provokes Sascha out of her shell.
So later, when Sascha embraces her empath abilities and matures emotionally while Lucas struggles with his emotional control, it was a little disappointing. Their dynamic went from atypical to falling in line with gender norms, albeit with a supernatural twist. As an E-Psy and ‘healer of the mind’, she’s shouldering a lot of emotional labor in her relationship with Lucas as well as with the pack. I hope later books introduce male healers and E-Psy, because I don’t like the idea of these inherent abilities being passed down to females only. The powers that E-Psy possess are really cool, especially the potential to heal the trauma of others! It seems like a bummer, though, to constantly manage the emotions of other people (mainly male shapeshifters with tempers).
Overall, I really enjoyed the romance, I just liked the earlier bits best. The shared dreams were particularly effective at forging a believable connection between them, before either character was ready for that in real life. It’s like a heightened version of the trope where dreaming about another person either makes them realize their attraction to the person or allows them to act on feelings they aren’t supposed to have. Because neither character realizes that they’re dreamingtogether, their subsequent struggle to continue acting normally around each other is especially entertaining. I also liked that the mating bond was not immediately evident and it took time and effort to develop and accept.
I liked the earlier bits of plot and worldbuilding more than the latter, too. The culture of the Psy and the inner workings of the PsyNet were intriguing. Singh’s writing struck a good balance between being concise and descriptive. I never felt like I was drowning in exposition nor was I left wanting more explanations. Unfortunately, because Sascha’s abilities are all mental, the climax of the plot was internal, too. Sascha going into the PsyNet to trap and identify the serial killer was the one part of the book that I found difficult to grasp conceptually. Then the physical confrontation and action occurs off the page with different characters. It was just a bit underwhelming to have an external, high-stakes conflict resolved through internal strategic mental maneuvering.
3.5 stars. The first half is completely engrossing and fast-paced. The second half took me longer to get through as the things I liked about the romance and plot shifted in a different direction. Still, I’m pretty eager to continue the series and am curious about how the overarching plot will progress.
EDIT 04/13/2021: Yesterday, the Heaving Bosoms podcast posted their recap episode for this and I highly recommend checking it out. I wholeheartedly agree with Erin about the changelings' aversion to M/M platonic PDA within the pack, despite having no qualms about M/F PDA. I kid you not, I wrote a paragraph about this in my original review but decided to cut it for length.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Violence and Murder