There was going to be a romance in this book, but it stalls out because we didn't see the couple get together in the first place. The relationship had happened and ended, and she hated him, at the beginning of the book. Much much later, by the time they finally meet up again, I didn't really see anything attractive about either one; she was brusque and sulky, and he was taciturn and distant. The "parans" in this story, a persecuted people on Earth, have ill-defined psychic powers which are inborn, and need to be nurtured, and there are apparently several strains, only one of which is named. Our heroine nearly kills herself on several occasions expanding her powers. By the end of the story she has developed them to the point that she is essentially a demigoddess, and going to do lots of good things because psychic powers are so good and only good people are born with them. The bad guys are just ordinary and envious bags of evilness trying to destroy all the good parans because they are terrified of them, so with the combination of Our Heroine's mighty powers and her ability to mind-meld with similarly powerful aliens and other humans, she can mentally reach out to Earth and do powerful things to attack them and thwart their evil plans. Actually, that does sound terrifying. Maybe the bad guys have a point.

Perhaps the author had lots of ideas for continuity and world building that didn't get into the book because science fiction in the 1970s had to be edited to fit into a 200 page paperback. ( )