Allegiance of Honor by Nalini Singh Series: Psy-Changeling, #15
Published by Berkley on June 14th 2016
Pages: 478
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The Psy-Changeling world has undergone a staggering transformation and now stands at a crossroads. The Trinity Accord promises a new era of cooperation between disparate races and groups. It is a beacon of hope held together by many hands: Old enemies. New allies. Wary loners.
But a century of distrust and suspicion can’t be so easily forgotten and threatens to shatter Trinity from within at any moment. As rival members vie for dominance, chaos and evil gather in the shadows and a kidnapped woman’s cry for help washes up in San Francisco, while the Consortium turns its murderous gaze toward a child who is the embodiment of change, of love, of piercing hope: A child who is both Psy…and changeling.
To find the lost, protect the vulnerable—and save Trinity—no one can stand alone. This is a time of loyalty across divisions, of bonds woven into the heart and the soul, of heroes known and unknown standing back to back and holding the line. But is an allegiance of honor even possible with traitors lurking in their midst?
Knowing that Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changelings series is so beloved by many readers – me included – makes this review doubly hard to write. To say that ‘Allegiance of Honour’ is a disappointment is in itself so incredibly difficult to do, because I’d hope this ensemble cast of a book would have been the crowning glory of the Psy-changeling series.
I remember the wonder that overcame me when I tore through ‘Slave to Sensation’, ‘Caressed by Ice’, ‘Kiss of Snow’ and several others which have long become my favourites, loving how this rich universe expanded and grew as Singh revealed an expansive vision of a near-future world torn and divided along lines that went beyond ethnicity or religion.
But maybe it’s time to throw in the towel.
Because what I’d expected of the close of this ‘season’ fell far short of my hopes. Instead, ‘Allegiance of Honor’s’ narrative was too scattered, too bloated and too unfocused as every single character flitted in and out of the huge mythos that Singh has built, as they each gave an update of what has been happening to them in the interim months or years. Not having read all of the books in the series, there were chunks of this story I didn’t understand nor could find myself interested in, which, needless to say, makes ‘Allegiance of Honor’ a book that isn’t a standalone, nor a story that is for everyone. While I loved every scene (as few as there were) with Hawke and Sienna and the wolves, everything else soon became fair game – pun unintended – when it came to filling the space of this huge story that didn’t really go anywhere but merely solidified the key players in the story, the key players in the next season of the series as well as what has already happened…ad nauseum.
Many of these characters’ happy lives after their books have been already filled in the space of my own imagination and even if it’s lovely to see the multiple HEAs come to fruition, perhaps this rather effusive and over-extended epilogue had gone on long enough.
