Singh, Nalini - Slave to Sensation

[oyceter]

Or: the shapeshifter condo book!

Lucas Hunter is the alpha of the DarkRiver leopard Changeling pack. A serial killer is currently targeting Changeling women across packs, and Lucas suspects that the killer is Psy, even though the Psy race supposedly suppressed all their emotions in a protocol called Silence in order to get rid of crime and other nasty stuff. He starts working with Sascha Duncan to build Changeling condos and to try to get more information from the Psy from her.

Sascha, on the other hand, is supposedly a cardinal-level Psy—you can tell who these Super Powerful Psy are because their eyes are all black with little white specks, like stars (I am not kidding! They also turn into rainbow fireworks when she orgasms. SO NOT KIDDING!). But her powers have never manifested, and she's spent a lifetime hiding her defectiveness from her extremely powerful mother and from the rest of Psy society.

And finally, I can say it truthfully: TOGETHER, THEY FIGHT CRIME!

Well, a crime.

(And they build condos.)

I've read several of Singh's Psy-Changeling series before, and her extremely possessive and violent men really don't do it for me. Also, Sascha is much more of a healer figure in later books, which made me much less inclined to be interested in her. Fortunately, in this book, she is all icy Psy, and she has a lot more angst than Lucas, which surprised me.

Don't get me wrong. Lucas does have angst. He is a hero; he must have angst. However, Sascha's angst is the main plot driver. Lucas' angst does have some bearing on how the relationship progresses, but almost all of the change comes from Sascha, which is sadly still abnormal in romances. Unfortunately, as with most of Singh's books, once Sascha's shields come down, the relationship suddenly becomes much more conventional and much more boring.

Also, I totally wanted more of the condos. I loved all the details about the deal negotiations and the talk of materials and such! The condos sadly go away when the serial killer plot really kicks in, but I loved what we got of them.

As noted, the book has many of the same flaws that are in the rest of Singh's books. While I like that she does have some women fighters, most of them are still men. I also continue to hate the whole Changeling mating thing and the men's possessiveness. On the other hand, this series continues to fascinate me as well, because of how things like emotional neediness and the desire for comforting touch is built into the Changelings, alpha men included. Also, Singh starts here with her trend of multi-racial characters; Sascha is a quarter or an eighth Japanese, Scottish, and I think something else. Sadly, the trend goes along with lots of Starbucks skin descriptions and frequent use of the word "exotic."

In conclusion: interesting worldbuilding, flawed prose and execution, and somewhat interesting gender and race stuff that never goes as far as I want it to.

Comments

[minnaway]

>They also turn into rainbow fireworks when she orgasms.<

...wait, like, her eyes change colors to be all rainbow-sparkly? Or are there actual rainbow fireworks in the air?

...either would be excellent, really.

[oyceter]

Her eyes change colors! Or, uh. The background stays black, but the white star-like pinpricks turn into rainbow fireworks! In her eyes!

... as Sparky mentions below, I have no idea how that works biologically, but who cares.

[oursin]

I'm now pondering exactly what would happen if she went to the optician for an eye-test...

[oyceter]

Heeeee!

[sparkymonster]

You thought I was kidding about condos BUT NO!

Also, the eyes thing really freaked me out. I mean, if our eyes are solid black with little flecks HOW DO YOU SEE?!?! The whole rods and cones situation in your eye will not work.

[oyceter]

The condos! Awesome! I could have had a whole book with Lucas and Sascha negotiating back and forth about land and materials and etc.

OMG so did not think of how the Super Speshul eyes function! They are so speshul they ... do not use rods and cones? Or maybe their entire eye is a giant giant pupil! And the white specks are... bacteria. Uh. Yes.

[oracne]

Maybe they actually see with Psychic Powers instead of rods and cones.

What I liked most about this one when I read it for the first time (when it came out) was the whole reversal-thing, with the emotional!male and distant!female.

[oyceter]

Probably! I was actually much more struck by the emotional!male/distant!female thing in this book, which I completely had not expected, given that (spoilers) later on, Sascha is the healing empath. Though I'm still sad it never goes quite as far as I want! I always get bored in the resolution, when the women very suddenly stop being distant.

[coffeeandink]

The rainbow thing is kind of fascinating, because it makes it impossible for women to fake orgasm, which would really do things to some patriarchial assumptions, you know? Like, if you actually pushed that all the way into the world-building, it could be interesting. Illustrate world-building via porn! Hmmm.

[rachelmanija]

Maybe the fakers squinch their eyes shut during orgasm! And then the natural eye-squinchers are always suspected of faking it! And people are always peering deeply into their partners' eyes, possibly making their partners so nervous that they don't have fireworks! THERE COULD BE ANGST!

[oyceter]

OMG that would be so awesome!

[oyceter]

Oh, fascinating! I hadn't thought of that. The current worldbuilding in the book is such that only super-powerful Cardinal Psy get those eyes (which also go pure black with rage or sadness I think), and since the Psy don't do emotion, they also usually don't do sex. And, of course, it's a romance novel, so you know, women ALWAYS orgasm when they have sex with their True Love! It's a Sign!

But that would be really really interesting, and I'm especially curious if the rainbow eyes come out if you're having sex and orgasm period, or if it's only if you orgasm with your True Love, etc. etc.

[rachelmanija]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! The condo book!

Starbucks skin is really omnipresent, even in books by POC. I think the last three books I read by POC had at least one "coffee-colored" or "mocha-colored." I'm leaning toward thinking that that's something that some POC have positive, non-exoticising feelings about, though obviously many POC feel just the opposite.

(My last encounter with "exotic" was applied to the eyes of a white character, in a context that seemed to mean "pretty." You keep using that word...)

[oyceter]

You want to borrow it when you come up? *evil grin*

I'm hoping it's that some POC have non-exoticizing feelings about the descriptions, although I also wonder if it's just the level of politicization and/or getting so used to the exoticism that they reflect it back? Then again, I haven't noticed how politicized someone is vs. their term usage, so I have no idea. I do think Nalini Singh is much less politicized than Marjorie Liu, though mostly in terms of feminism...

Ha! You commented, and I just read Connie Brockway using "exotic" to describe her British hero's blue-green eyes! Go fig.

[badgerbag]

I am seriously about to slap P.C. Cast for the caramel-colored Caribbean-American vampire Shaunee. In fact I think caramel latte! Repeated at least twice per book! It doesn't *help* that they're also hanging out in a Starbucks all the time!

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I read this, when a friend lent it to me, and I wound up writing an entire "I read a lot of SF and fantasy genre crossover into romance novels but not like *this,* sheesh, dammit" essay. (Then I deleted the paragraphs about Singh because, okay, they didn't have any point outside my own skull.)

(I counter-lent Pagliassotti and some of Ann Maxwell's "Fire Dancer" stuff, which went over better.)

Not inspired to read any more of Singh's books, anyhow.

There's world-building -- but it's consistently deprioritized in ways which rasp on my reading habits. Somewhere late in the book there's a psionic hacking run which made my metaphorical ears perk up. For about three pages it's an interesting (if gizmo-oriented) SF novel, and then the author drops it, as if that's all the non-UST time the audience could possibly tolerate.

I also got the notion (purely inferred, not claimed anywhere) that the author started from the point of vampire-and-werewolf paranormal-romance, and then got more interesting ideas about the vampires. I kind of wish she'd gotten more interesting ideas about the shapeshifters, too. If the Changelings had been alter-human beings, like the Psy, but with *different* psychology and biological imperatives -- not physical shape-changers -- then the whole world setup would have felt tighter and more original.

But, again, this is a matter of my reading protocol as an old-grain SF fan. Psionics are (old-grain) hard SF; people turning into wolves is magic. (Unless a buildingful of medical equipment is in evidence.)

[oyceter]

Oh, that's so funny! I actually think Singh and Marjorie Liu and the new crop of urban fantasy/paranormal romances are so much better when it comes to worldbuilding! But then, I'm comparing them to the paranormals from about ten years ago, where magic was frequently just kind of shoehorned in for no good reason and no explanation, or the explanations were so weak that they were laughable.

I like the Psy-Changeling series because at least there is a worldbuilding conflict going on throughout the series... it's not just about the three heroines solving some curse (hello, Nora Roberts and your Irish magic!), but about actually changing the structure of the society of the world, as well as a complete overthrow of the Psy. Liu's worldbuilding is much less coherent and much more comic-book-y, but even then, it feels so much more integrated than the old paranormals.

But yes, I do think they are still a ways away from most of the SF/F I read, although they remind me a lot of my favorite SF/F shoujo manga.