Ocean's Echo

Ocean's Echo is a science fiction novel by Everina Maxwell, published by Orbit in 2022 and set inside a military machinery that treats telepathy as equipment rather than as a private life.

Tennal is a wealthy socialite, an inveterate flirt and a walking disaster, and when he is caught using his powers for illegal ends, the army's answer is not a cell but a binding: his mind is tied to someone strong enough to hold it. Lieutenant Surit, the child of a disgraced general, agrees to be bound to him because the posting restores a pension to his other parent, a motive he is not proud of. Keeping Tennal conscripted looks impossible, and that is the point at which both men's private plans begin to collide with their superiors' intentions for the frontier.

Maxwell writes the novel as space opera with a romance at the centre, so the questions it raises about obedience, family reputation and conscription are argued out between two people who are obliged to know each other's minds whether they like it or not.