Review: Slave to Sensation, Nalini Singh

In the Psy-changeling world, Psy attempt to deny themselves all emotions, becoming cold but completely logical.  On the other hand, changelings turn into animals and are largely ruled by those emotions, accepting all of their people for who they are.  Sascha Duncan has always struggled with being a Psy, unable to stop herself from feeling emotions.  She has never come into her cardinal powers, either, and she knows she’s flawed, incapable of joining her mother in Psy government.  When she launches a project with Lucas Hunter, a panther changeling, she realizes for the first time that there’s another world out there, and that perhaps it’s acceptable to feel.  But with a changeling killer on the loose, how long will she have to feel?

I am of two minds about this book.  Half of me loved it and the other half of me didn’t like it so much.  Most importantly, I think, is the fact that I was really intrigued by the world.  I tend to think that paranormal romance is mostly set in our world except the people in it are vampires/werewolves/fairies/whatever.  This is totally different, it’s set in a completely different world.  There are humans, but I don’t think there are any in this particular book.  The Psy are all connected mentally, which I found to be quite an interesting concept and it worked extremely well within the context of the story.  I definitely wanted to spend more time in this world.  I liked the quest to catch the changeling killer.  I didn’t think it took away from the romance at all even though it’s a fairly large part of the book.  Rather, I enjoyed the way the storylines fit together.

It’s the romance that I didn’t like so much.  While I didn’t particularly mind either of the main characters, I thought it moved way too fast and had far too many sexual scenes.  It happens virtually every time the hero and heroine are alone.  As we all know, I’m not really a fan of the lust = love romance, and so the first half of the book disappointed me in that way.  By the end, though, I did think they’d grown past it and had been through enough together for me to “get over” the first half.  Slave to Sensation definitely wasn’t as moving as it could have been.

Still, I think I’ll be reading more of Nalini Singh.  I liked the world enough to continue this series and I think the author has a lot of potential.  I also happen to have Angels’ Blood courtesy of Tasha at Heidenkind’s Hideaway, so I’ll be reading that next.

I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.