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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 Healers' 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 into another 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 purposes. 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?
Janice Hardy is also the author of The Shifter and Blue Fire, the first two books in the Healing Wars trilogy. She lives in Georgia with her husband, four cats, and one nervous freshwater eel.
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.\There is no question that this is a fast-paced, fun novel with an original fantasy that incorporates well both the light and dark sides of the magic. Personally, I'm always a fan of original fantasies that are done well. Specifically, that means that the fantasy itself has never been done before, the world itself is unique, and the magic must be explained properly with the proper guidance and rules. Like anything in nature, magic will also follow a set of organic guidelines or it won't really make sense to the reader.
Hardy has given us all the necessary elements for a good original fantasy. The rules are clear, the characters themselves must choose between the evil and good sides of what the magic is capable of, and the world itself is unique to the type of fantasy she's exploring. However, although I did enjoy it, I have a few qualms about the story overall. First, there is a lot of willing suspension of disbelief in regards to what the characters are able to accomplish.
Also, Hardy sets us up for a second book, but the set up is a bit trite and cheesy. I'm not sure we really needed the set up to be so obvious. Nya is going to take on the Duke all alone, which is unfortunate that she has such a clear vendetta. I think it would be more interesting if we were to find Nya and Tali in hiding at the beginning of the next book and watch as they have to navigate a myriad of difficult circumstances as they continue to explore the original world that Hardy has created.
Lastly, and this is my biggest gripe, it's difficult to figure out what the world looks like, not just the specific scenes that Nya finds herself in, but the world as a whole. I have a hard time picturing the landscape, the geography and layout of the land. I can't seem to imagine how the buildings appear or the relative size of the city. Also, would it be so hard to hire an artist to recreate the world on a map? That seems like a pretty standard thing to do with original fantasy worlds and stories.
However, despite some of the flaws, I really enjoyed this new fantasy that delves into the prospect of using healing powers for evil or good. I recommend this book to all readers 11+.
This is the first in the series, so far, and I look forward to the rest of the books.
-Lindsey Miller, www.lindseyslibrary.com
5 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Originally reviewed and published at www.readerviewskids.com
http://maggiesbookshelf.blogspot.com/2009/11/shifter.html
War is never kind to the losing side: So fifteen-year-old orphan Nya has discovered since the Baseeri invaded and occupied her homeland, the tropical island of Geveg, forcing her people out of their homes and livelihoods and into the streets. And while her sister Tali's abilities have granted her a comfortable life training as a Healer in the League, Nya's own talents have a darker side to them: instead of transferring pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal use to store it, she can only shift it from person to person. She has vowed never to use her sinister abilities due to their sometimes lethal side effects. But now with her secret exposed Nya is forced to choose between saving the life of her sister and only family and destroying the resistance efforts of her own people forever.
Despite weighty themes such as racism, poverty and government corruption, "The Shifter" is a surprisingly easygoing read; from its inventive, mild street slang ("sure as spit" and "Sweet Saea" being two examples) to characters that, while somewhat likeable, aren't exactly original. Because of this, it's thought-provoking without being overwhelming, an excellent combination for middle grade fantasy. And Hardy's non-traditional views on healing will probably spark a bit of "I wish I could do that" in its target audience.
Unfortunately, though, older teens aren't likely to be as impressed. Its breezy style gets grating after awhile, and the one-liner dialogue is corny and the characters downright annoying as the book goes on. Nya's views on boys were particularly immature, making her seem more like a twelve-year-old than a fifteen-year-old. The setup for sequels is obvious, especially towards the end, and the foreshadowing feels heavy-handed and confusing. I also had a hard time keeping the political factions of Geveg and Baseeri straight, and Hardy would have done well to tone the diplomatic intrigue down a little.
Despite all that, it is hard not to admire the messages that the author has set out to tell, and mostly succeeded in doing so. "The Shifter" is immensely readable and refreshingly original, and it drives home the point that no matter your writing ability, concept will always be king in fantasy and science fiction (try reading "Twilight" if you aren't convinced). While it probably won't be the next "it" series, "The Healing Wars" is definitely one to watch.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.VoiceOfDance
Posted July 29, 2010
I Also Recommend:
I didn't just go through and say, "Oh I liked this book so I'll give all the detailed ratings a five star", I honestly after thinking it carefully through think this book deserves every star it got. The characters were conflicting enough to keep them interesting, the story line was intriguing and slathered in twists, and the writing style was smooth and seemed to have had a lot of effort put into it. The first time through this book I couldn't put it down (Which I personally find rare in most books) and things didn't change at all during my second read. Need I state it more plainly; I loved this book. I very rarely purchase books as I have a library right down the street, but this is one I made an exception for. I cannot stop singing my praises for this book. I would recommend for anyone with a passion for reading and a love for fantasy.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 24, 2010
I Also Recommend:
I was going through the library and I saw this book and I had nothing better to do for awhile, so I figuered I might as well rerad it because it looked pretty good. I didn't have high expectations, but in the end it was a good book. I am glad I decided to read it. I like how Nya is as powerful as her sister (if not more) in the end even though in the beginning she thought she wasn't good for much. I also liked how she was tough ans willing to do a lot of things, but was sweet and liked to help people. I liked how Janice Hardy didn't make her one of those girls who absolutely refused to do something morally wrong, even if the person agreed to it and it would help save them. Because, honestly, those girls are boring. Not many people are actually like that. And a lot of authors make their characters like that. But in the story Nya didn't do the aboulutely horrible things, which was good. It was a good balance of having a character that was realistic but at the same time uncorruptable in her own way. You should definately get this book.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.The Shifter is one of my favortie books. Many twists,secrects,and surprises good or bad keep the reader endured. This was a book I couldn't stop reading. It was a real page turner. My friends enjoyed this book too, and agreed anyone who likes to read would like to read this book! As soon as you start reading about the first chapter you know this book will give you a good laugh. I promise you that once you get really into the book all you will want to do is read. If you like fantasy books or mythical things, this is definatly a book to buy! Trust me on this.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 26, 2012
took to long to get the meat of the story:( Slow will not be looking for book two
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Posted February 22, 2011
it wasnt the best book ive ever read, and it was a little childish, but the idea and story line was ok, the idea better then the story. but it left off, in my opinion, on a cliff hanger.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 8, 2011
Just wondering if anyoe would recommend this book.
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Posted June 2, 2009
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Overview
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 Healers' 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 into another 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...