The Healing Wars: Book I: The Shifter

by Janice Hardy Narrated by Luci Christian

Overview

Fifteen-year-old Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. She is also a Taker-with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body.

But unlike her sister Tali and the other Takers who become Healer's League apprentices, Nya's skill is flawed: she can't push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it from person to person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If discovered, she'd be used as a human weapon against her own people.

Rumors of another war make Nya's life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too far and exposes her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purpose. At first, Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she's faced with some difficult choices.

As her father used to say, principles are a bargain at any price, but how many will Nya have to sell to get Tali back alive?

Editorial Reviews

School Library Journal

Gr 8–10—In this first book in a planned trilogy, 15-year-old Nya and her younger sister, Tali, who were orphaned during the recent war that nearly destroyed their city, both have the gift of healing. Unlike Tali, though, Nya can't harmlessly shift the pain she takes from the sick and wounded into enchanted pynvium metal. Instead, she must shift it from person to person, a dangerous talent that she keeps hidden from the ruling Baseeri and from the Healer's League where Tali is an apprentice. Scrounging to make ends meet, Nya resorts to odd jobs and the occasional theft to stay alive. When a young soldier discovers her secret and implores her to save his dying father, Nya is forced to choose between protecting herself and acknowledging her ability to save others and perhaps her entire city. First-time author Hardy has written an inventive coming-of-age tale about a likable young woman whom readers will cheer throughout her exploits. Her appealing narration chronicles her expanding worldview as she progresses from a self-interested survivalist to a reluctant heroine to a determined rebel. Fantasy fans and those who just love a good story will enjoy this fast-paced novel and eagerly await book two.—Leah J. Sparks, formerly at Bowie Public Library, MD

Kirkus Reviews

A teen with the power to shift pain from one person to another chooses between saving her sister's life and her principles in this first of a projected series. Orphaned when the Baseer invade and occupy Geveg, 15-year-old Nya and her sister Tali live in an oppressed world where pain is controlled by a Healer's League that trains "Takers" to transfer human pain into a substance called pynvium. The League charges to remove pain, pain merchants buy pain to enchant weapons and anyone able to "shift" pain is subject to "death, prison, maybe even experiments." Nya suppresses her shifting power until Tali and other League apprentices mysteriously disappear and a pain merchant threatens to make her a pawn in his plot to subvert Geveg. In the tradition of strong-willed adventure heroines, Nya rallies, unleashing her powers as she faces complex moral dilemmas. Her first-person narration is suffused with the agony of deciding who will live or die. Timely ethical exploration in the guise of high-action fantasy. (Fantasy. 10-16)\

From the Publisher

In the tradition of strong-willed adventure heroines, Nya rallies, unleashing her powers as she faces complex moral dilemmas. Her first-person narration is suffused with the agony of deciding who will live or die. Timely ethical exploration in the guise of high-action fantasy. — Kirkus Reviews

Nya’s distinctive first-person voice, strongly personable with a wry sense of humor, draws readers in…[the] hard-charging plot makes the pages fly by...Would you save someone’s life at the cost of unbearable pain to someone else?[Readers] will eagerly await the next volume of the Healing Wars. — The Horn Book

The headstrong Nya and the innovative premise...keep readers turning the pages. — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Fantasy fans and those who just love a good story will enjoy this fast-paced novel and eagerly await book two. — School Library Journal

The Horn Book

Nya’s distinctive first-person voice, strongly personable with a wry sense of humor, draws readers in…[the] hard-charging plot makes the pages fly by...Would you save someone’s life at the cost of unbearable pain to someone else?[Readers] will eagerly await the next volume of the Healing Wars.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

The headstrong Nya and the innovative premise...keep readers turning the pages.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

The headstrong Nya and the innovative premise...keep readers turning the pages.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

The headstrong Nya and the innovative premise...keep readers turning the pages.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173605269
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/14/2012
Series:	Healing Wars , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

Read an Excerpt

The Healing Wars, Book One: The Shifter

Chapter One

Stealing eggs is a lot harder than stealing the whole chicken. With chickens, you just grab a hen, stuff her in a sack and, make your escape. But for eggs, you have to stick your hand under a sleeping chicken. Chickens don't like this. They wake all spooked and start pecking holes in your arm, or your face, if it's close. And they squawk something terrible.

The trick is to wake the chicken first, then go for the eggs. I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to figure this out.

"Good morning little hen," I sang softly. The chicken blinked awake and cocked her head at me. She didn't get to squawking, just flapped her wings a bit as I lifted her off the nest, and she'd settle down once I tucked her under my arm. I'd overheard that trick from a couple of boys I'd unloaded fish with last week.

A voice came from beside me. "Don't move."

Two words I didn't want to hear with someone else's chicken under my arm.

I froze. The chicken didn't. Her scaly feet flailed toward the eggs that should have been my breakfast. I looked up at a cute night guard not much older than me, perhaps sixteen. The night was more humid than usual, but a slight breeze blew his sand-pale hair. A soldier's cut, but a month or two grown out.

Stay calm, stay alert. As Grannyma used to say, if you're caught with the cake, you might as well offer them a piece. Not sure how that applied to chickens, though.

"Join me for breakfast when your shift ends?" I asked. Sunrise was two hours away. He smiled but aimed his rapier at my chest anyway. Was nice to have a handsome boy smile at me inthe moonlight, but his was a sad, sorry-only-doing-my-job smile. I'd learned to tell the difference between smiles a lot faster than I'd figured out the egg thing.

"So, Heclar," he said over his shoulder, "you do have a thief. Guess I was wrong."

Rancher Heclar strutted into view, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the chicken trying to peck me-ruffled, sharp beaked, and beady eyed. He harrumphed and set his fists against his hips. "I told you crocodiles weren't getting them."

"I'm no chicken thief," I said quickly.

"Then what's that?" The night guard flicked his rapier tip toward the chicken and smiled again. Friendlier this time, but his deep brown eyes had twitched when he bent his wrist.

"A chicken." I blew a stray feather off my chin and peered closer. His knuckles were white from too tight a grip on so light a weapon. That had to mean joint pain, maybe even knuckleburn, though he wasn't old enough for it. The painful joint infection usually hit older dockworkers. I guess that's why he had a crummy job guarding chickens instead of aristocrats. My luck hadn't been that great either.

"Look," I said, "I wasn't going to steal her. She was blocking the eggs."

The night guard nodded like he understood and turned to Heclar. "She's just hungry. Maybe you could let her go with a warning?"

"Arrest her, you idiot! She'll get fed in Dorsta."

Dorsta? I gulped. "Listen, two eggs for breakfast is hardly worth prison-"

"Thieves belong in prison!"

I jerked back and my foot squished into chicken crap. Lots of it. It dripped out from every coop in the row. There had to be at least sixty filthy coops along the lakeside half of the isle alone. "I'll work off the eggs. What about two eggs for every row of coops I clean?"

"You'll only steal three."

"Not if he watches me." I tipped my head at the night guard. I could handle the smell if I had cute company while I worked. He might even get extra pay out of it, which could earn me some goodwill if we ever bumped into each other in the early-morning moonlight again. "How about one egg per row?"

The night guard pursed his lips and nodded. "Pretty good deal there."

"Arrest her already!"

I heaved the chicken. She squawked, flapping and scratching in a panic. The night guard yelped and dropped the rapier. I ran like hell.

"Stop! Thief!"

Self-righteous ranchers I could outrun, even on their own property, but the night guard? His hands might be bad, but his feet-and reflexes-worked just fine.

I rounded a stack of broken coops an arm-swipe faster than he did. Without slowing, I dodged left, cutting up a corn-littered row of coops running parallel to Farm-Market Canal. It gained me a few paces but he had the reach on my short legs. No chance of outrunning him on a straightaway.

Swerving right, I yanked an empty market crate off one of the coops. It clattered to the ground between me and the night guard.

"Aah!" A thud and a crack, followed by impressive swearing.

I risked a glance behind. Broken crate pieces lay scattered across the row. The night guard limped a little, but it hadn't slowed him much. I'd gained only another few paces.

The row split ahead, cutting through the waist-high coops like the canals that crisscrossed Geveg. I veered left toward Farm-Market Bridge, my side throbbing hard. Forget making it off the isle. I wasn't going to make it off the ranch.

More market crates blocked the row a dozen paces from the bridge. The crates were knee high and a pace wide, with tendrils of loose, twisted wire sticking up like lakeweed. Didn't Heclar ever clean his property? I cleared the crates a step before the night guard. His fingers raked the back of my shirt and snagged the hem. I stumbled, arms flailing, reaching for anything to stop my fall.

The ground did it for me.

I sucked back the breath I'd lost and inhaled a lungful of dust and feathers. The night guard crashed over the crates a choking gasp later and hit the ground beside me. Dried corn flew out of the crate and speckled the ground.

I hacked up grime while he swore and grabbed his leg. He'd left a pretty good chunk of his shin on one of the crates, and his bent ankle looked sprained for sure, maybe broken.

He glanced at me and chuckled wryly. "Just go."

I dragged myself upright, but didn't run. He'd lose his job over me, and I'd guess he didn't have many options left if he was working for a cheap like Heclar. I knelt and grabbed his hands, my thumbs tight against his knuckles, and drew....

The Healing Wars, Book One: The Shifter. Copyright (c) by Janice Hardy . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.\

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