Reviews with content warning for Blood - Visions of Heat

Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Visions of Heat by Nalini Singh

2 reviews

alexlynx's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I was really invested in the story. The Psy and changeling lore was really interesting and the philosophical questions on the importance of emotions were fascinating.
But the relationships between the characters? Mhm. Difficult. It is made quite clear again and again that all characters in romantic relationships consent to the behaviour that their partners, specifically their changeling partners, portray. Yet consent is quite frankly a slippery slope in this book. A lot of the phrasing of thoughts, wants, wishes, etc. from the male mc are very worrying. And while the female mc's thoughts voice consent, some of it is given because she knows he needs it. Which is..a little uncomfortable.
I still had fun following the plot but you can bet that I wanted to punish several characters multiple times.

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adoras's review

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emotional hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I really enjoyed the first book in the series, but this one was, for the most part, a massive disappointment. My first problem is that it uses a lot of the same elements as the first romance: a possessive Changeling man and a repressed, more naive Psy woman. Because we'd already been over a lot of these concepts and seen the great initial worldbuilding, a lot of this feels like a pale imitation. But many of the things that did feel different about their dynamic made me really uncomfortable. Vaughn is incredibly aggressive and possessive and one of his traits is that he's more "animal" than the other shifters, while Faith, as an F-Psy who can predict the future, is more "delicate"--she's been sequestered for most of her life, and touch can make her spiral and is (at first) incredibly physically and emotionally uncomfortable for her.

Because of these elements to their characters, a lot of their interactions involve Vaughn ignoring her boundaries. And yes, to an extent there's a good plot reason: Faith has to be able to live in the world and accept stimuli. But the extent to which it happens, and the way it's mingled with Vaughn giving in to his attraction to her, is really gross to me.

Some quotes that I highlighted because they made me uncomfortable (and these aren't all of them):

Faith shifted a subtle inch. Vaughn knew she was attempting to increase the distance separating them, but he didn't want that. He moved with her and felt her spine stiffen.
She didn't react in any obvious way, but he could feel her tension. Good. He wanted her disturbed—that damn shell she had around herself irritated the hell out of him.
He hadn't touched her again after she'd threatened to leave midway through the meal, but she knew the promise had ended the minute they'd finished breakfast. If she exited this room, he'd start pushing her again.
The cat wanted to play, but the male knew when to demand and when to let be.
"What are you doing in my bed?" she asked, too surprised to suppress the question. "I just wanted to know if I could do it."
'Careful, Faith.' It was a soundless whisper. 'He won't stop when you tell him to.'
...but the cat lived by instinct and it said Faith was his to take.
Faith NightStar was about to be hunted. He had no intention of harming her and every intention of breaking down the sensual walls that separated them. By the time he finished, Faith would be enslaved by her body's hunger, the woman core of her screaming out for him. It would take patience, but Vaughn was used to stalking prey without break for hours, days... weeks.
This aroused, he had trouble controlling the beast. It was something Faith was going to have to deal with, but not today.
"How would you like it if I thought of you as you're thinking of me and my body?" He grinned. "You know how I'd like it."
Encouraged, he continued with his erotic fantasies, playing with a woman he'd decided was his. Faith might not agree, but Vaughn had never lost marked prey.

Another element of the plot is that Vaughn could lose control and hurt Faith during sex/foreplay. Even though he's terrified of hurting her and doesn't end up doing so, I really don't like that as a conflict/theme. It plays into this idea that men don't want to hurt women, but sometimes it just happens. We're also given to understand that he needs to have sex with her without waiting too long because she's his mate. While I understand that Changelings need touch, the focus on him needing to have sex also plays into harmful ideas about men and women. (To be fair, at a later point he does tell her that he won't die from blue balls, and that if he's going "cat", she should leave the situation and not worry about him.)

The last third of the book really picked up. One thing that I liked about Faith and Vaughn's romance is that they completed their mating bond a little earlier than Sascha and Duncan. It was nice to see them together as a slightly more settled couple, and I actually really enjoyed them after that point. What we did get of the politics and further worldbuilding is really good; I loved learning about the NightStar family, seeing more of the Council, and especially the NetMind. I will be continuing this series because I've heard that the third book is one of the best, and that it switches up the dynamic from a male Changeling and female Psy.

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