Storm Echo
Nalini Singh
Published August 9, 2022
Berkley
376 pages
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Storm Echo is the 21st book in Singh’s sprawling sci-fi-tinged Psy-Changeling paranormal romance series, or the sixth in the “second season” Trinity storyline. While you don’t need to have read them all, this one goes back to the DarkRiver leopards of the very first book, Slave to Sensation, and features characters from both the earliest and most recent books, so anyone trying to start here would find themselves first completely lost and then basically spoiled for the previous instalments. This world is complicated and unique, which is why I keep coming back to it: I confess I was getting tired of the repetitive plots and lack of progress of the main story arc, but this one has restored my faith and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Psy security consultant Ivan Mercant has always walked alone, afraid of effect the dark power within his mind could have on those he gets close to, but when he meets a Changeling healer called Lei, they are immediately drawn to one another, until she disappears after getting caught up in a brutal attack on her pack. Meeting again by chance, she doesn’t remember him, but the feline part of her does – and this time it won’t let him go, but a dangerous force is building in the Psy-Net that only Ivan can stand against…
This series has been going for sixteen years, so I was surprised to realise that only five or so years have passed since Lucas Hunter and Sasha Duncan first bonded. Unfortunately for me, this remains primarily a romance series – Singh has found a formula that works and has stuck to it, so every book is about two people who believe themselves irreparably damaged by childhood trauma overcoming a life-threatening psychic threat with the power of love. The interesting part is the background networks that surround and support them. The Trinity storyline has been almost all about members of the Mercant Russian Psy-spy family, who are undoubtedly fascinating, but I liked meeting all the leopards from the early books again. Soleil’s animal is teased for a while, but made sense once it was revealed. The ridiculously and unnecessarily drawn-out question of who The Architect is was finally confirmed, and will not be a surprise to anyone following the series.
The writing remains flowery and repetitious – count the number of times the word crystalline is used – but happily the sex scenes are dialled down to a modest two, are short and happen appropriately late in the book. I’m allergic to amnesia plot lines, but this one doesn’t overdo it. There’s a good dose ofchangeling cubs and more snarky humour in this one, with lot of our favourite characters making cameo appearances but not too many new ones being introduced. In my opinion this is the best of the Trinity books to date and I hope they continue in this vein, as I’m intrigued to see where she takes the post-Silence Psy story.
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