Book Review: The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni
After reading rave reviews from a YA fantasy reading group, and swayed by the beautiful, moody cover, I purchased a hardcover of The Prison Healer (Isn't it gorgeous?). Excited, I snuggled into bed on a zero-degree January night and started turning pages. Alas, my reading HEA reading experience didn't materialize.
This is one of those reviews I don’t look forward to writing. I love the opportunity to gush about a new favorite author and their amazing craft. My heart sinks when I’m at the end of the third chapter, and I still have my editor’s cap on. I think it is one of the draw backs of being a author/reader. Years of drafting my own stories can't help but influence my reading experience, and I try to keep that in mind. But, if you liked this book - I'm so glad! It just wasn't for me.
What I liked: The plotline had a lot of promise. I was intrigued by the concept, and excited about reading a book with elemental magic. The trial by elements felt a little contrived, but I love elemental magic, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt. The description of the trials themselves are exciting, but they are spaced so far apart they really lose their punch in the overall narrative. The climax was good, as well as some of the twists at the very end of the story (especially the reveal in the last couple sentences), although it didn’t really resonate with who I’d come to know as Kiva. The last four chapters raised my rating up to two and a half stars.
What I didn’t like: This book TELLS almost everything. We don’t experience what Kiva goes through. She tells us what she’s going through. She tells us what she’s been through. In the first chapter, Kiva tells us she was assaulted by some prison guards and rescued by new guard Naari. Why didn’t the author write this part? As a reader, I would’ve been dropped into Kiva’s shoes, experiencing the brutality of the prison, and Naari’s character (arguably one of the best) would’ve leapt off the page. Overall, Noni’s writing craft is undeveloped and lacking in skill. This weighed down what could’ve been an exciting and moving tale.
The supporting characters and villains feel underdeveloped, like paper dolls, hence the story is predictable. They are everyone and no one – Tilda, Tipp, Naari, Jaren, Rooke, Cresta, the butcher, bones – I feel like I’ve already read these characters in hundred other novels. I kept looking for details, moments that would give them definition and vividness, but never found them.
Some of the narrative is contradictory. Kiva tells us the prisoners assigned to tunnel work don’t live longer than six months. But Jaren somehow has time to visit Kiva, form a relationship with Tipp, and nurse Kiva back to health after her trials (despite really never talking with her. Again, we’re told about that instead of experiencing it in dialogue). Despite being in the middle of a deadly plague, Kiva has time to take samples from multiple sights on the prison grounds, and run several rounds of rat testing to determine the source of the infection, all while managing care, quarantine, making medicines, taking care of Tilda’s weird illness, watching over Tipp, and enduring the elemental trials. I never overcame my incredulity. These odd details also slow the pace to a crawl.
I didn’t ever come to an understanding of the central external conflict in Kiva’s world. I think part of this was because the characters are stuck in a prison setting, so the reader is told about the rebels, instead of experiencing their impact in Kiva’s world. The same with her family. The glimpses of them in backstory and the coded messages just aren’t enough to give them faces. It makes Kiva’s choice to take Tilda’s place in the trials feel contrived. I never really connected with why she would take on such a risk. In a way, it makes sense at the end of the story, but it’s not soon enough to make a difference.
There is a striking lack of dialogue. Most of the story takes place in Kiva’s head. I think this is why so much of the story feels so flat – why I didn’t feel the love story at all, why so much of it felt contrived, why the black pages toward the end feel like a gimmick. By the end of the book, I thought I might scream if I had to read -Don’t let her die We are coming- one more time.
Overall, it was well plotted, but the writing craft and execution was lacking. This reading experience was so disappointing I will be skipping the rest of this series.
2.5 stars