The Healer
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
Payne is a member of a minority offshoot of humanity called Grotesques, or Tesques, who are distinguished by a cranial deformity and an extra orifice in their chest. A small percentage of Tesques have the ability to effect phenomenal healings, which makes them a valuable commodity in their world. Sadly, such gifted healers live a life somewhere between that of a possession and a slave. Payne is unusual in that he is seemingly unaffected by the mysterious burn out (called "The Drain") that all other healers experience. The novel follows his journey across the strange landscape of his world in a search for an acceptance he may never find. Along the way, we move from the outskirts of society, to an isolated mining camp, to a metropolis dedicated to gambling and vice, to a secret government compound where the most dangerous of healings are performed. Finally, we climax in a scene where reality meets mythology, and Payne experiences a transformation that will forever alter the balance between Tesques and Humans. Blumlein brings his experience as a practicing physician to bear in this novel, which subtly and beautifully examines the ways in which society both reveres and fears members of the medical profession. The Healer is a story of human life and death, human rites and rituals, seen through the eyes of an outsider, one who knows humans better, perhaps, than they know themselves. In the vein of such authors as Jonathan Lethem and Jonathan Carroll, The Healer is literate, philosophical, entertaining, moving and original. From the Hardcover edition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Blumlein's haunting literary SF novel, Payne, a "Grotesque" (or "Tesque"), can draw disease from patients into his own body, then extrude the sickness as an abstractly shaped "Concretion" from an organ in his side. Few Tesques whose misshapen appearance from a bump on the skull distinguishes them from normal humans develop the ability to heal. Taken from his family to train as a physician, Payne imagines the fulfillment to be found in helping others, despite the prejudice most people have against Tesques. Driven by idealism, he attempts to cure a fellow healer of "the Drain," an affliction that's slowly destroying her talent. But Payne reverses the problem, leaving her too sensitive to work. Later, searching for forgiveness, he works to save a small church, only to be rejected by its new congregation. "Sometimes a patient had to be brought to the very brink of death before... he could be healed," Dr. Blumlein (The Movement of Mountains) tells us, and this original, surreal and extraordinary book shows why. Blurbs from Kim Stanley Robinson and Peter Straub, as well as the author's status as a finalist for World Fantasy and Stoker awards, bode well for sales.
