Once upon a time, like back in September, I read an article somewhere about a person reading Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling-Trinity series. They said that they had read all seven books. They mentioned that this series came after the events in her original Psy-Changeling series. They hadn’t read those books. After all there are 15 of books in that series and that would be really weird to go sit down and read all those, right?
So, here we are.
Totally weird to read all those in a month.
Nalini Singh had been on my radar for my South of the Equator challenge. I had read her mystery book and it was ok. I knew she was more famous for her paranormal romance but they didn’t seem to really be my thing. I decided to go all the way back to the beginning after reading that article and try the first one.
Then I mainlined them.
Even though the author is from New Zealand, the books mostly take place in California. In this version of the world though, there are three main species: Humans, Psy, and Changelings. Changelings are shapeshifters. Psy are a psychic race. One hundred years ago, in the 1970s, they implemented The Silence. It is a process of conditioning imposed on their children to remove all emotion. It was supposed to stop the high rates of violent mental breakdowns seen in their society. Now the Psy are coldly logical. They are interlinked into a mental web called the PsyNet that protects their minds and lets them communicate with each other. It also lets them access vast amounts of information mentally.
The story starts when a powerful but unstable Psy woman named Sascha is chosen by her mother to head up a business deal with a Changeling pack. Sascha’s conditioning is starting to break down. She’s not able to hide it well anymore. Her mother is one of the heads of the Psy worldwide. Having to have Sascha rehabilitated would be politically untenable. As she meets the very emotional Changelings, she starts to see that there may be a new way to live. The fractures that radiate out from Sascha’s decisions start to have major impacts on all of Psy society.
Although these are all romance books with a central romantic couple in each book, there is a through plot in the entire series. I loved the through plot. It is all politics and world building and adventure and all the stuff I love. That’s what kept me coming back to see what happened next.
As the books progressed you get to see more and more Psy people. I like them a lot more than the Changelings. Yes, I took a moment to think about that. Yes, I also took into consideration that I really want to live on Vulcan. Yes, I may really, really love a world where emotions are actively suppressed, especially in public. It was lovely. When the stories were on the Changelings there was way too much of the Alpha Male bravado stupidity for my liking. As soon as people start yelling about “You’re mine!” in a romance novel I want to bash him over the head with the book.
That brings me to the sex. There was a lot. Sigh…. so much. I like clean romances. These are the opposite. Why do they keep biting each other’s bottom lips? Like, drawing blood biting. And not just the cats. Someone does that to me once and I’m punching them. It happened so much that I started to think that maybe this was normal behavior and I just missed it somehow. Oh my god, don’t tell me if it is.
Anyway, there was so much sex that it actually helped me read these so fast. It is amazing how fast you can get through books when you are flipping past whole chapters at a time because they are tearing each other’s clothes off again and I just want to know how those negotiations back in the city are going. Why yes, I would have been one of those people who read porn magazines for the articles, why do you ask?
I finished these up in time for November and my plan to focus on science fiction and nonfiction that month. I needed something like that to pull me out of this world. I do plan on reading the Psy-Changeling-Trinity series when I can submerge myself again. I don’t really recommend starting there. I’d go all the way back to the beginning to really get into the world. The overall story is great. The characters are great. The relationships are warm and loving (if too often and way too explicitly for my particular liking). I’m sure I’ll be diving into some of her other series over time too.
