Title: Blaze of Memory
Author: Nalini Singh
Series: Psy-Changeling #7, Psy-Changeling Season One #7
Rating Out of 5: 5 (I will read this again and again and again)
My Bookshelves: Dark fantasy, Paranormal romance, Shapeshifters
Pace: Fast
Format: Novel
Publisher: Gollancz
Year: 2009
5th sentence, 74th page: Since the day he’d realized he carried within him the seeds of the very violence that had shattered his life as a child.
Nalini Singh returns to the Psy-Changeling world and its breathtaking blend of passion, adventure and the paranormal, as a woman without a past becomes the pawn of a man who controls her future…
Dev Santos discovered Katya unconscious and battered, with no memory of who she is. All Katya can tell him is that she’s dangerous. Charged with protecting his people’s most vulnerable secrets, Dev is duty-bound to eliminate any and all threats against them. It’s a task he’s never hesitated to complete… until now, when he finds himself drawn to a woman who could prove to be the enemy’s most insidious weapon yet.
Stripped of her memories by a shadowy oppressor and programmed to carry out cold-blooded murder Katya Haas is fighting desperately for her very sanity. Dev is her only hope. But how can she expect to gain the trust ofa man who could very well be her next target? For, in this game, someone is going to die…
It took me a little longer to get full immersed in this story – there was little contact with changelings, and it was of a very different pace and tone to the preceding six books. However, when I did finally fall in love with Dev and Katya, as I have with every other Psy-Changeling couple, I fell hard. Hard enough to weep at moments throughout the story.
Blaze of Memory starts to tell the story of the Forgotten, those who abandoned the Silence at its instigation. Dev’s devotion to and suffering because of his position as one of these renegade Psy almost echoes that of the Psy from generations ago – before the implication of Silence. Although the Psy are often painted as the ‘bad guys’ throughout the Psy-Changeling series, seeing the decision to remove emotion from the point of view of those who are now going through the same thing is a great way to create sympathy for the ‘bad guys’. Things are never black and white, and Singh illustrates this beautifully with Dev’s plight and the story of his fellows.
Contrastingly, Katya’s torture and loss of identity was the direct effect of total Silence – a lack of conscience and compassion. The brutality of her story and memories, which slowly unfold are a stark contrast to the emotions and love which flows around the Forgotten. It is Katya’s story that brought tears to my eyes and her ability to find an inner strength that makes the journey all the more meaningful.
Earth and Skye 
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