Healer's Quest

The Renegade World Series #1

by Jessica Palmer

Zelia is a priestess with sky-blue skin and strange tempers. Half-human and half-air elemental, she lives uneasily in the College of Healers. Perceived as an outsider, and declared a renegade, she is nevertheless chosen for strange and dangerous task.

Ares is an opportunist and adventurer. Neither elf nor human, he is another outsider, welcomed by no one, mortal or otherwise.

Misfit and outcast meet, and together they discover they possess unimaginable powers of sorcery which they will need to combat the scourge that threatens the land. For the evil necromancer Queb, long though dead, has returned...

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction

298 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 1993

About the author

An American author who writes science fiction, fantasy, mystery and horror. She also has written nonfiction under her full name of Jessica Dawn Palmer.

Palmer was born in Chicago, Illinois. She initially studied psychology and nursing.

Reviews

[Wyrdness · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was one of the first 50 books I ever read for fun back in the 90s. It holds a lot of nostalgia for me, and the Scholastic book cover is one of the first that made me think maybe I'd like to do that as a job one day (it didn't happen, but never say never! :D)

Unfortunately all that nostalgia doesn't translate in to a great re-reading experience, because this was bad. Not just bad, it was awful.

Not one of the characters I enjoyed, not even the ones I remember liking when younger. None of them are properly developed, most of them are inconsequential extras, terrible people, or incompetent fools.

The plot is padded out with a bunch of needless scenes that go nowhere and add nothing, and is disappointingly set up as a "chase" but then doesn't deliver on that promise. I'm genuinely not sure why Zelia had to leave the city the way she did and not as, say, a Messenger for the Healing Order.

The ending is also such an anticlimactic waste of time and obvious cliff-hanger set-up for a sequel that I can only assume I didn't realise it as a kid because I had no reference for what constituted a "good" fantasy book yet.

Then there's all sorts of other "this aged extremely poorly and it wasn't good to start with" content that I'm not going to list and was appalled to have not remembered at all.

What's so incredibly disappointing though is that there are some excellent bones to an untold but kickarse and slightly spooky adventure buried under everything, if only they were given the time and nurturing to grow in to a full fleshed out story!

[SBC · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this up to read as I remember finding some gems in the Point SF range as a teenager. Unfortunately, this was not for me - very old school style fantasy, with lots of high language and themes that did not appeal. DNF past the first few chapters.

[MJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-reading the Point Fantasy novels I bought as a kid & enjoying the nostalgia more than the writing.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this, it is very rare that I read a book straight through. This kept my attention and made me want to keep reading. It also caused me to go looking for the next book in the series.

[Lizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this story as a child, especially the section with the chicken and the brightly covered wagon, still rather appealing.