Separated from her son and forced to create a neural implant that will mean the effective enslavement of her psychically gifted race, Ashaya Aleine is the perfect Psy–cool, calm, emotionless…at least on the surface. Inside, she’s fighting a desperate battle to save her son and escape the vicious cold of the PsyNet. Yet when escape comes, it leads not to safety, but to the lethal danger of a sniper’s embrace.
DarkRiver sniper Dorian Christensen lost his sister to a Psy killer. Though he lacks the changeling ability to shift into animal form, his leopard lives within. And that leopard’s rage at the brutal loss is a clawing darkness that hungers for vengeance. Falling for a Psy has never been on Dorian’s agenda. But charged with protecting Ashaya and her son, he discovers that passion has a way of changing the rules…
This is the 6th book in Nalini’s Psy/Changeling series. And…um…wow. If you haven’t picked up and started reading this series yet, you’ve missed some of the best writing this millennium. Every book gets better, draws you deeper into this world, makes you fall more and more in love with these characters.
Every time I read one of these books, I proclaim it my favorite. HOSTAGE TO PLEASURE is no different. I was in the middle of a writing frenzy last week, needing to finish a book in a week, and yet I still found myself taking breaks to devour chapter after chapter of Nalini’s wonderful, incredible world, unable to put her book down so I could go back to writing my own book. (I really have to stop reading excellent books like this while I’m writing. :giggle: )
The thing I loved most about this book is the inherent flaws in both the characters makeup. Dorian is a changeling who is unable to shift, and yet instead of thinking himself a failure, he makes himself better at everything else, a super cat stuck in human form, an amazing, sensual creature with heightened senses, a sentinel who stands at the right hand of the pack leader, sworn to defend, to kill.
Ashaya is an imperfect psy who feels, who loves her son when Psy who exhibit emotions are damned. And yet this makes her stronger, able to slip beyond the Psy’s defenses in order to save those she cares for. It gives her an understanding of the people who rescue her, and propels her right into the arms of the man who guards her, the man who should hate her, but can’t.
Their story gripped me from the first page and wouldn’t let me go. Nalini weaves a tale of a man who lost everything, yet still remained strong, who should have hated the woman whose species took the one thing he loved, but learned to look beyond that to the women inside the Psy, and taught the woman grappling with the terror of emotions that letting go with him would give her the freedom she was afraid she’d never have.
I loved this book.
Excerpt here on Nalini’s website
You can preorder the book here at Amazon. It releases next week so it’ll be available everywhere.
