Book twelve! And this one definitely had some mystery surrounding it, as far as the primary characters involved and the direction the overall plot was going to take during it. And I can see why, if a potential reader was perusing blurbs about the books to see whose stories are upcoming. If you are in any way not interested in hearing who this installation focuses on, maybe go ahead and skim this review (or just know that it was a top fav of mine, of the series, and have that be your major takeaway). However, if you’ve gotten within 4 books prior to this one, the secrets aren’t really all that secret. It’s just that the mystery of the blurb adds to the overall vibe. Anyways, here we go with the actual review. 

Heart of Obsidian gives us, after quite a bit of foreshadowing and build-up, Kaleb Krycheck’s story. The dark, silent (and Silent), dangerous, super powerful Psy is one that I would not have expected getting to star in his own romance, but I think I loved it even more because of that. The mysterious lady in his sights is Sahara Kyriakus, someone we have literally never heard of before (or maybe she was mentioned once in Faith’s story, but that was a long time ago now). As we know, Kaleb has been searching for someone since we first met him, and we finally find who that is. As the novel unfolds, we learn, alongside Sahara herself, what Kaleb’s connection to/obsession with her actually is (the events that kept her hidden from him having forced her into a mental state that has caused her to forget much of her past). Though, despite her lack of specific Kaleb-related memory, the feeling of “safety” she has while around him is unignorable. While their feeling for each other finally get the space and freedom to recover from the past, and grow into something greater, around them the PsyNet is falling for real. Pure Psy carries out violent attack after violent attack and the time for Kaleb to make his move to control the Net is fast approaching. 

Well, this book was explosive – in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. And, in a surprise to me (because a Psy-Psy relationship isn’t one that I thought would be my favorite), this is probably my second favorite after Hawke and Sienna. I think the fact that there was quite a bit of build-up, in both cases, really helped. However, this one took me a bit longer to get invested in. The first third or so, before we started to get more real background on Kaleb and Sahara, as her memories came back to her, I was still unsure. But as I watched the start of their story unfold, with its unmitigated sweetness and purity of connection, flying in the face of everything around them, my heart just melted. And finding out the end of it – well, more the intermission of it – was heartbreaking (and hard to read; cw: physical and psychological torture with a tie-in to a much earlier evil character that was just as bad as the first time we dealt with him). Kaleb and Sahara are the perfect hard and soft opposites for each other, filling out the other’s needs with a loyalty and love (and a willingness to both truly see each other, and to sacrifice everything for the other, on both sides) that runs deeper than everything they went through. And I loved watching that develop both in the past and in real time. (I’m a bit of a sucker for a dark, almost unsavable, hero and Kaleb is that in spades; while Sahara holds her own in a way that is equally attractive.) Long story short: this couple gets a big yes from me. 

There were also kind of a lot of other things going on throughout the novel and pushed the overarching plot forward in an extreme way, with Kaleb and Sahara’s connection acting as the final straw in the Psy civil war. Pure Psy really went for it in this book, playing all their cards, big time, and things got ugly. Lots of death as things within the Net came to a head. This, of course, led to quite a bit of collateral damage external to the Net, which allowed for the collaboration among the humans, changelings and anti-Pure Psy (so, necessarily now, pro the fall of Silence) Psy contingents to really take some major forward steps. There as one scene, as they all came together to plan/respond, when so many of the MCs of previous books/the series were together in one room, that was just really satisfying, as a reader who has made it through so many books in this series so far. 

Also, which makes sense if you think about it, there is quite a bit of exposition related to the current state of affairs within the Arrow contingent, and other opposition facets of the Net, and I think that sets up some of the final romances we are going to get (which I’m happy about, if I’m right, because those people deserve love more than anyone else.) In particular, we get the major reveal we’ve all been waiting for re: the Ghost, which wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but the emotion/relationships behind it that were revealed once we know were surprisingly affecting.     

This book ended with a very definite turn taken internally with the Psy related to Silence, and with an unprecedented inter-species cooperation reality after all the trauma/disaster, and I am very excited to see how the next books move to address the aftermath and close out the conflict and the series.