The brutality of need

kw: book reviews, science fiction, fantasy, prejudice

It is like Earth but not Earth; they are called human and may be human, maybe not; their society is like semiurban America...usually. In a story told from the nonhuman viewpoint, Michael Blumlein, MD, presents in The Healer a narrative of a society wholly dependent for the health of its citizens on rare, gifted individuals from a despised race.

They are usually called "tesques," short for Grotesque. And grotesque they are, having misshapen skulls and an extra organ system—attached to an extra orifice on the rib cage—by which one tesque in ten can extract nearly any disease from a human, compact it into a grisly "concretion," and excrete it for disposal. This is the setting for a tragic novel of rare beauty.

Payne, perhaps the most gifted healer of his generation, or of all generations, finds healing easy and pleasurable. Indeed, it replaces all other passions, whether he is working on the roughshod miners in an isolated camp, the (temporarily) high-society denizens of a mirror of Las Vegas, or the hardest cases, near-moribund victims of "sixth level" illnesses. He is, like Orson Scott Card's overly-moral heroes, an innocent in a rough-and-tumble world that he never does understand.

Healers don't heal healers. Payne tries, once, and condemns a friend to an agonizing living death. At the instigation of his brother's human paramour—his brother Wyn was also a gifted healer—he tries once more, and succeeds in healing his brother. But at that point, the book departs into a full-fledged fantasy, having Payne re-live one of his people's creation myths. I found this ending profoundly disappointing. The author's point is clearly to provide a means to change from the outside a society that cannot be changed from within. The book closes with this hope plainly implied.

But I'd have preferred a less-mystical means of getting there. Ending with Payne in pursuit of his brother's snake-like 6^th-level concretion would have left Dr. Blumlein with the room needed to develop a more satisfying transition to a second society in a sequel.

That's the trouble with the triple-point boundary between Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction (where I place most of this novel), and Fantasy. Begin invoking magic, and it will run away with you.