Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4 stars
In this interesting fantasy, people have the power to be healers by drawing injury or illness out of a person into themselves. They they are able to "dump" the pain into a material called pynvium. The Guild is full of healers and apprentices with these skills. Nya and Tali are orphaned sisters, victims of the endless wars. Tali is at the Guild as an apprentice, but Nya has a different skill. She can't heal, but she can "shift" pain by drawing it out of one person and passing it to another instead of putting it into the pynvium. The implications of how this skill could be used in the wrong hands is why Nya keeps her talent hidden. So instead, she struggles for her existence on the streets of the city. But one day, her secret inadvertently comes out and Nya finds that there is much more than her skill at stake--there are big plots underfoot and she may be one of the only people who can do anything about it. This is a very involving plot with a lot of character development and good world building and readers will be ready and willing to get to book 2, Blue Fire.
