day five - let's talk that one book series again.
Sonni/sonni89 asked me a few things about psy-changeling and then favorite things. so here we go. this is like just over 2k and I apologize in advance.
I tried to think of ways to break this post up into categories that would make it more organized, and more interesting to people reading it. There's so much I love about this series that when I get going I always end up talking a lot. So I'll try to limit myself a bit. And then of course, we can talk about whatever in the comments.
Universe:
I've been a big fan of fantasy genre for a long time. I learned to read around the age of three, and once I hit around ten, fantasy was the big genre that I gravitated towards. Romance was the second once I got to be a teenager at 13/14 and started stealing and sneaking my mother's Nora Roberts and other romance novels.
So this series kind of combines both in a way. It's not strictly fantasy and it's not strictly romance. I'm not sure what paranormal romance technically is, other than it's own subset genre; aside point, I once saw someone refer to this series as sci-fi and I was like well I don't think so. Genre classification is a bizarre thing when you start breaking and combining things together.
AT ANY RATE, the compelling thing is the universe and the world building that Singh has here. And how she manages to keep it all in line. The only other author I would compare her to actually, in terms of level of detail, doing it justice, and keeping it all consistent and great every time is Jacqueline Carey.
Here, she's created three different and distinct races. The humans (which she's not done a whole lot with at the moment), the Changelings, and the Psy. And the way she starts the series is kind of great. She plops us straight down into opening crisis where tensions have completely boiled over between the three races and the Psy have conditioned their people into this protocol that just isn't working for the vast majority and is crippling them. It's gripping. The first two books of the series spend a lot of time explaining the world and how it works, which I don't fault her for at all. While the particular romances didn't immediately grab me from the first two, the world building and the universe absolutely did; and truthfully, Sascha and Lucas develop so much over the course of the series that it's fantastic and I don't mind book one and love it even more now on re-reads. Book three is the one that sold me on the romances.
Within her races, she takes care and detail to flesh them all out. The Psy all have the base telepathy, but on an individual level, each Psy is then unique in their abilities. Even ones who have the same designation (thinking of say Judd or Kaleb who are both Tks, but don't do the same things within Telekinesis) are individualized. Psy have different roles and functions, down from those who work in law enforcement, those who are medics, those who are business orientated, those who make the future predictions, and the Cardinals who operate on a different plane; I actually have thought a lot on how all Cardinals seem to have an insatiable hunger inside them to learn and absorb more about their own abilities.
The Changelings are not all the same. DarkRiver is not all leopards within it. Humans are involved as well. SnowDancer is much larger and has places for everyone within its structure, different roles and such to play. Changeling packs operate in different ways, both internally and then also externally in regards to the different packs.
It's just interesting to see her create all of this and then consistently manage to maintain this level and move the story forward. She's talked before about how she keeps a "bible" or basically a massive folder on her hard drive that stores all of this information. I'd love to see it and go through it. I wish more authors did that, honestly.
It's great that she has created this and does it so well. It's interesting how she uses set characters as lynchpins and fixed points; such as you can use both Kaleb and Sienna for reference points for trying to figure out a lot of things.
All of this to say, I love the world she's created and continues to create and play with. I love that she's constantly moving forward. Nothing is stagnant, everything is building up to a new world order where the three races will have to change and adapt and be different. It's the universe that makes you come back again and again.
Identity:
Another super compelling thing about this series and is a favorite of mine, is the series hinges as a whole on identity construction.
Which makes sense if you think about the above, in that she introduces the series on the brink of everything fucking up. So naturally, you'd think that there would be some heavy questioning of roles and spaces in life and where you want to be and stuff.
But the great thing here is that because the Psy have been conditioned to a) not feel anything, and b) be essentially cogs in a machine network, all of them go through an identity crisis of sorts. Where they get to decide who and what they want to be.
Sascha and Faith get to defect and decide they don't want to be used by the Council and as business assets. Judd gets to decide he no longer simply just wants to be an assassin, but something more, a leader with a role in a family structure and the Pack. Sienna gets to have EVERYTHING and gets to live, and gets the decades to figure out just what she wants to be, a precious gift since she thought she'd die before ever hitting the age of twenty. Kaleb and Sahara both get to enact their childhood dreams and be something more, possibly an inspiration for others. Sophia gets to dictate her own terms of business. The many Arrows that drop out via the assistance of Aden and Vasic get to disengage from their role as military soldiers. And so on.
Many of the changelings also go through identity phases, though not to the same degree so much. The most obvious, at least to me, are Lucas and Hawke who refocus in ways. Riley loosens up a bit. Adria stars her life over entirely.
Even the humans are currently going through a change where they are trying to assert themselves as having a role in the three races and no longer just put down.
But what makes all of these even more interesting to me, is that none of the past is erased. It's not a carte blanche change. It's not a, oh we're just going to forget everything that happened to you before, start over blank slate. It's okay, here are the opportunities for you to be something else, to be something more, and it can be what you want. It's your choice. And them having that is so important and good.
Range of Characters:
Rolling along with the above, Singh does an amazing job of giving us such a wide range of characters.
As of right now, there's currently twelve books in the series, several novellas, and book 13 comes out in less than two weeks. Her characters list is huge. But I don't ever feel like she's repeated a character ever. Or made a trope that repeats itself. Which is so impressive to me.
She gives us those who are evil (Santano, Ming) and those who are good.
But then she gives us everything in between. And what I truly love is that she gives us such a wide range. Sienna is not Sascha who is not Mercy who is not Brenna who is not Nikita. Anthony is not Hawke who is not Judd who is not Kaleb who is not and you get my point. So on and so on.
We get everything from the mother who is the ruthless business woman but lies to protect her daughter to the human leader that's willing to kidnap people to get a seat at the table to the human that's been frozen for over a hundred years and has just been woken back up. While not every character works for me, I don't ever feel like someone is boring. Which given how she has written twelve current books, is impressive to me. It's not stale.
Range of Pairings:
Which of course bleeds into echoing that I don't ever feel she repeats a pairing. There are certain tropes that pop up in some pairings, but for all twelve books, I don't think she's ever, to me, repeated a pairing.
We did a thing on Twitter not too long ago where we all tried to rank them and it was really hard. Well, trying to rank books is hard. But then trying to rank pairings outside of like absolute top faves is hard. For me, Hawke/Sienna, Kaleb/Sahara sit at the very top.
Hawke and Sienna get built up over nine books before we finally get to theirs. I did a huge post talking about them here and why I love them but god they are just so very good to me.
I've not actually sat down and discussed why I love Kaleb and Sahara so much EXCEPT THAT I DO. IT'S A PROBLEM. IN THE BEST WAY. I mean as of this moment, I think they're the pairing that I've written the most about in terms of pairing fic. Which says a lot considering I've written 21 fics for the whole series. No wait, I've definitely wrote the most for them. I am not ashamed. These two though messed me up so much. Kaleb gets introduced in book two and so we then get him for the next ten books. We find out he's searching for something, then it's someone, then the house doesn't belong to him, he's just taking care of it, till we finally find out the reason Singh named dropped Faith's missing cousin in book two was because Sahara is the person he's been looking for over a seven year period and couldn't find, till he then finds her at the end of book eleven. AND THEN WE GET THEIR BOOK AND IT'S TERRIBLY SAD BUT TERRIBLY GREAT AND EVERYTHING IS A LOT. CHILDHOOD FRIENDS THAT KEPT EACH OTHER'S SECRETS AND WANTED A BETTER LIFE TOGETHER WHO WERE THEN TORN APART AND ABUSED AND THEN FOUND EACH OTHER AGAIN AND HE BUILT HER A HOUSE WITH A CARPET TO MATCH HER EYES AND A KOI POND. and now idk they're matchmaking up Arrows and spending their days having sex everywhere and being model Psy citizens for the Psy race while ruling it.
You asked also about Mercy and Riley, and I adore them a lot too. I think they're definitely in my top echelon of pairings, though Judd and Brenna probably come third after the aforementioned two.
BUT, what I love about Riley and Mercy are the little sneak peaks we get before their book. About how Mercy has been imagining having sex with him. About how Riley bugs the shit out of her on purpose. And then there's is the book where we legit first time get two people that are on equal footing in terms of rank? Not that the others aren't partners before, but it was compelling to get two people who occupy the same rank and responsibilities and then that butting up against as they butt heads. Them working it out and working out that no they actually want one another and crave one another; i have a weird theory that Riley's wolf always built the cabin knowing it was for Mercy and he was just too dumb to realize it. I mean their book opens up with them fucking in the dirt, so you know. Which is why it was a lot of fun to write those two fics exploring that. BUT I DIGRESS. Now they're having potentially four pupcubs and I can't wait till they're born; I want my theory that Aden has to randomly deliver them to come true. I just really enjoy that their narrative is very real in figuring out, okay, I love this person, I'm not giving up my life, but how do I rearrange so that we can have a life together.
Family:
AND FINALLY BECAUSE THIS POST IS SO HUGE AND I'M SORRY AND I'LL SHUSH SOON
A favorite thing is the family dynamics and stuff we get out of this series.
Not just found families (with Pack, with the Arrows, with Bo and the Human Alliance, etc)
But also the different types of families we get.
The Lauren Family gives up everything to try and give the two youngest a shot at living and trying to protect them. Which from the outside of the series we know is rare and odd given what the Council tries and says.
The Kyriakus family never stops looking for Sahara, and takes care of its own, under the disguise of "business", but Anthony is so very proud of Faith and loves her.
Nikita will maybe never hug Sascha, but she loves her and has been lying for decades and probably taught her how to shield her mind so that the Council never found out her empathic abilities.
Mercy's changeling family is so fun and bright and lovely.
Indigo's family seems stifling in a way to Evie.
I just like that she gives us the different types of families? Not all are great or good, but it represents the different ways families are. Which I appreciate.
And I am going to end this before I keep going, BUT I am open to talking about anything in the comments.
I tried to think of ways to break this post up into categories that would make it more organized, and more interesting to people reading it. There's so much I love about this series that when I get going I always end up talking a lot. So I'll try to limit myself a bit. And then of course, we can talk about whatever in the comments.
Universe:
I've been a big fan of fantasy genre for a long time. I learned to read around the age of three, and once I hit around ten, fantasy was the big genre that I gravitated towards. Romance was the second once I got to be a teenager at 13/14 and started stealing and sneaking my mother's Nora Roberts and other romance novels.
So this series kind of combines both in a way. It's not strictly fantasy and it's not strictly romance. I'm not sure what paranormal romance technically is, other than it's own subset genre; aside point, I once saw someone refer to this series as sci-fi and I was like well I don't think so. Genre classification is a bizarre thing when you start breaking and combining things together.
AT ANY RATE, the compelling thing is the universe and the world building that Singh has here. And how she manages to keep it all in line. The only other author I would compare her to actually, in terms of level of detail, doing it justice, and keeping it all consistent and great every time is Jacqueline Carey.
Here, she's created three different and distinct races. The humans (which she's not done a whole lot with at the moment), the Changelings, and the Psy. And the way she starts the series is kind of great. She plops us straight down into opening crisis where tensions have completely boiled over between the three races and the Psy have conditioned their people into this protocol that just isn't working for the vast majority and is crippling them. It's gripping. The first two books of the series spend a lot of time explaining the world and how it works, which I don't fault her for at all. While the particular romances didn't immediately grab me from the first two, the world building and the universe absolutely did; and truthfully, Sascha and Lucas develop so much over the course of the series that it's fantastic and I don't mind book one and love it even more now on re-reads. Book three is the one that sold me on the romances.
Within her races, she takes care and detail to flesh them all out. The Psy all have the base telepathy, but on an individual level, each Psy is then unique in their abilities. Even ones who have the same designation (thinking of say Judd or Kaleb who are both Tks, but don't do the same things within Telekinesis) are individualized. Psy have different roles and functions, down from those who work in law enforcement, those who are medics, those who are business orientated, those who make the future predictions, and the Cardinals who operate on a different plane; I actually have thought a lot on how all Cardinals seem to have an insatiable hunger inside them to learn and absorb more about their own abilities.
The Changelings are not all the same. DarkRiver is not all leopards within it. Humans are involved as well. SnowDancer is much larger and has places for everyone within its structure, different roles and such to play. Changeling packs operate in different ways, both internally and then also externally in regards to the different packs.
It's just interesting to see her create all of this and then consistently manage to maintain this level and move the story forward. She's talked before about how she keeps a "bible" or basically a massive folder on her hard drive that stores all of this information. I'd love to see it and go through it. I wish more authors did that, honestly.
It's great that she has created this and does it so well. It's interesting how she uses set characters as lynchpins and fixed points; such as you can use both Kaleb and Sienna for reference points for trying to figure out a lot of things.
All of this to say, I love the world she's created and continues to create and play with. I love that she's constantly moving forward. Nothing is stagnant, everything is building up to a new world order where the three races will have to change and adapt and be different. It's the universe that makes you come back again and again.
Identity:
Another super compelling thing about this series and is a favorite of mine, is the series hinges as a whole on identity construction.
Which makes sense if you think about the above, in that she introduces the series on the brink of everything fucking up. So naturally, you'd think that there would be some heavy questioning of roles and spaces in life and where you want to be and stuff.
But the great thing here is that because the Psy have been conditioned to a) not feel anything, and b) be essentially cogs in a machine network, all of them go through an identity crisis of sorts. Where they get to decide who and what they want to be.
Sascha and Faith get to defect and decide they don't want to be used by the Council and as business assets. Judd gets to decide he no longer simply just wants to be an assassin, but something more, a leader with a role in a family structure and the Pack. Sienna gets to have EVERYTHING and gets to live, and gets the decades to figure out just what she wants to be, a precious gift since she thought she'd die before ever hitting the age of twenty. Kaleb and Sahara both get to enact their childhood dreams and be something more, possibly an inspiration for others. Sophia gets to dictate her own terms of business. The many Arrows that drop out via the assistance of Aden and Vasic get to disengage from their role as military soldiers. And so on.
Many of the changelings also go through identity phases, though not to the same degree so much. The most obvious, at least to me, are Lucas and Hawke who refocus in ways. Riley loosens up a bit. Adria stars her life over entirely.
Even the humans are currently going through a change where they are trying to assert themselves as having a role in the three races and no longer just put down.
But what makes all of these even more interesting to me, is that none of the past is erased. It's not a carte blanche change. It's not a, oh we're just going to forget everything that happened to you before, start over blank slate. It's okay, here are the opportunities for you to be something else, to be something more, and it can be what you want. It's your choice. And them having that is so important and good.
Range of Characters:
Rolling along with the above, Singh does an amazing job of giving us such a wide range of characters.
As of right now, there's currently twelve books in the series, several novellas, and book 13 comes out in less than two weeks. Her characters list is huge. But I don't ever feel like she's repeated a character ever. Or made a trope that repeats itself. Which is so impressive to me.
She gives us those who are evil (Santano, Ming) and those who are good.
But then she gives us everything in between. And what I truly love is that she gives us such a wide range. Sienna is not Sascha who is not Mercy who is not Brenna who is not Nikita. Anthony is not Hawke who is not Judd who is not Kaleb who is not and you get my point. So on and so on.
We get everything from the mother who is the ruthless business woman but lies to protect her daughter to the human leader that's willing to kidnap people to get a seat at the table to the human that's been frozen for over a hundred years and has just been woken back up. While not every character works for me, I don't ever feel like someone is boring. Which given how she has written twelve current books, is impressive to me. It's not stale.
Range of Pairings:
Which of course bleeds into echoing that I don't ever feel she repeats a pairing. There are certain tropes that pop up in some pairings, but for all twelve books, I don't think she's ever, to me, repeated a pairing.
We did a thing on Twitter not too long ago where we all tried to rank them and it was really hard. Well, trying to rank books is hard. But then trying to rank pairings outside of like absolute top faves is hard. For me, Hawke/Sienna, Kaleb/Sahara sit at the very top.
Hawke and Sienna get built up over nine books before we finally get to theirs. I did a huge post talking about them here and why I love them but god they are just so very good to me.
I've not actually sat down and discussed why I love Kaleb and Sahara so much EXCEPT THAT I DO. IT'S A PROBLEM. IN THE BEST WAY. I mean as of this moment, I think they're the pairing that I've written the most about in terms of pairing fic. Which says a lot considering I've written 21 fics for the whole series. No wait, I've definitely wrote the most for them. I am not ashamed. These two though messed me up so much. Kaleb gets introduced in book two and so we then get him for the next ten books. We find out he's searching for something, then it's someone, then the house doesn't belong to him, he's just taking care of it, till we finally find out the reason Singh named dropped Faith's missing cousin in book two was because Sahara is the person he's been looking for over a seven year period and couldn't find, till he then finds her at the end of book eleven. AND THEN WE GET THEIR BOOK AND IT'S TERRIBLY SAD BUT TERRIBLY GREAT AND EVERYTHING IS A LOT. CHILDHOOD FRIENDS THAT KEPT EACH OTHER'S SECRETS AND WANTED A BETTER LIFE TOGETHER WHO WERE THEN TORN APART AND ABUSED AND THEN FOUND EACH OTHER AGAIN AND HE BUILT HER A HOUSE WITH A CARPET TO MATCH HER EYES AND A KOI POND. and now idk they're matchmaking up Arrows and spending their days having sex everywhere and being model Psy citizens for the Psy race while ruling it.
You asked also about Mercy and Riley, and I adore them a lot too. I think they're definitely in my top echelon of pairings, though Judd and Brenna probably come third after the aforementioned two.
BUT, what I love about Riley and Mercy are the little sneak peaks we get before their book. About how Mercy has been imagining having sex with him. About how Riley bugs the shit out of her on purpose. And then there's is the book where we legit first time get two people that are on equal footing in terms of rank? Not that the others aren't partners before, but it was compelling to get two people who occupy the same rank and responsibilities and then that butting up against as they butt heads. Them working it out and working out that no they actually want one another and crave one another; i have a weird theory that Riley's wolf always built the cabin knowing it was for Mercy and he was just too dumb to realize it. I mean their book opens up with them fucking in the dirt, so you know. Which is why it was a lot of fun to write those two fics exploring that. BUT I DIGRESS. Now they're having potentially four pupcubs and I can't wait till they're born; I want my theory that Aden has to randomly deliver them to come true. I just really enjoy that their narrative is very real in figuring out, okay, I love this person, I'm not giving up my life, but how do I rearrange so that we can have a life together.
Family:
AND FINALLY BECAUSE THIS POST IS SO HUGE AND I'M SORRY AND I'LL SHUSH SOON
A favorite thing is the family dynamics and stuff we get out of this series.
Not just found families (with Pack, with the Arrows, with Bo and the Human Alliance, etc)
But also the different types of families we get.
The Lauren Family gives up everything to try and give the two youngest a shot at living and trying to protect them. Which from the outside of the series we know is rare and odd given what the Council tries and says.
The Kyriakus family never stops looking for Sahara, and takes care of its own, under the disguise of "business", but Anthony is so very proud of Faith and loves her.
Nikita will maybe never hug Sascha, but she loves her and has been lying for decades and probably taught her how to shield her mind so that the Council never found out her empathic abilities.
Mercy's changeling family is so fun and bright and lovely.
Indigo's family seems stifling in a way to Evie.
I just like that she gives us the different types of families? Not all are great or good, but it represents the different ways families are. Which I appreciate.
And I am going to end this before I keep going, BUT I am open to talking about anything in the comments.