The Healers' Road

The good doesn’t unmake the bad, but it’s outweighed, and that’s the important thing.

After hearing that the third book in this series is finally out, I just had to go back and re-read the first one. Happy to say it's position on my list of all-time favorites remains unchanged. It's the book that made me fall in love with the slice-of-life fantasy subgenre, and it's everything I look for when I crave a story of this type: thoughtful, character-driven, and cozy in the best way. The type of cozy that doesn't shy away from the painful and difficult things that can happen to us in life, yet focuses on how we can deal with these things and make life for ourselves and each other better on the other side.

Just like the title suggests, this book is all about journeys and healing. On the surface, it's about two healers taking a two-year trip with a caravan, making stops in various settlements along the way to offer their services to those who need them. Really though, it's about two very different people learning about themselves, and the world, and letting go of the aspects of their past that weigh them down. Agna is a somewhat spoiled rich girl, a recent graduate of of a low-magical academy, who signs up for this job to follow in the footsteps of an old friend she idolizes, and also to prove herself to her parents. Keifon is a military medic with a lot of darkness and trauma in his past, coming from a completely different culture with different beliefs. Naturally, they start by clashing. But through working together, sharing the same wagon and tent, dealing with various hardships on the road, and, eventually, talking a lot, they build a beautiful friendship and lift each other up.

That friendship, along with the fact that it firmly stays in the friendship territory, is among my favorite parts of the book, alongside all the tremendous character growth and the culturally rich queernorm setting the story takes place in. There are some hints at a future possible romantic entanglement, but they're always played down in favor of just, you know, being friends and found family for each other. Much as I love enemies-to-lovers storylines with opposites attracting, the relationship between Agna and Keifon is just so refreshing and so right for them. Just thinking about their interactions can make my day, I swear.

I really love how the author handles pacing. On one hand, the story feels really slow-paced, because of how thoughtful and in-depth each scene is. On the other hand, it covers two whole years in under 300 pages, focusing on all the right moments in a way that never feels clunky or rushed. Truly masterfully done. Unfortunately, while the storytelling here shines in terms of structure, the book could really use an extra line editing pass, which is the sole reason I'm not giving it full five-stars. I tend to be lenient with self-published books when it comes to the occasional typo or such, but here, there are whole passages punctuated so weirdly that it sometimes pushed me out of the story. However, I don't remember paying all that much attention to this when I first read the book—likely because I had a way better attention span then, and good brush off the distraction of a rogue out-of-place ellipsis quite easily without losing focus. So this shouldn't be a big problem for anyone who isn't so mind-foggy as I am these days!