The Prison Healer Review

In The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni, Seventeen-year-old Kiva Meridan has been an inmate in the Zalindov death prison for ten years when the Rebel Queen is captured and brought to her.

Kiva is charged with treating the terminally ill woman in order for her to complete the Trial by Ordeal, a series of elemental challenges that will either prove her guilty or innocent. Knowing her patient would never survive it, Kiva volunteers as her champion, her chances of survival being slim to none but should she survive the tests, both The Rebel Queen and her would gain their freedom.

General Impressions

I got this book in my Fairyloot subscription and after a quick glance at the synopsis started it only because I needed a bit of light fantasy sprinkled with a romance between the heavier books I have been reading.

The Prison Healer is dedicated to Sarah J. Maas and there is certainly a loooot of Throne of Glass vibes throughout from the world-building to the characters themselves. If you are a fan of SJM or Sabaa Tahir, you are gonna love this.

I was not especially moved by the writing or the world-building but was drawn in by the characters and wanting to know who they were and what they were hiding. That's not to say that the world-building is not interesting and original enough. More importantly, for me at least, it was obvious that it was something in which the author had spent a lot of time thinking about from all the details and history we learnt about them, particularly when it came to the prison itself and Kiva's herbal and medicinal knowledge. Other than a few terms that she should not know, and the amount of knowledge she had with barely any instruction, her work inside the prison was the richest in details and the most attention-grabbing part for me.

Characters

My favourite thing about this book was that there seemed to exist a reversal of gender roles when it came to our heroes and heroines personalities and capabilities: Kiva is the one that knows what's going on and where to tread inside the prison. She is the one that spent years carefully calculating which enemies she was capable of handling and where she would have to sacrifice her pride and respect to survive one more day. She is practical to the point of cruelty and very capable at what she does and I really liked that about her. She went to the SJM's school for tough heroines and I applaud that.

Jaren, the hero, is the stereotypical physically strong hero, but in Zalindov that is a disadvantage, relegating him to the worst and deadlier kind of jobs inside the prison. Despite the odds, he survives the first few weeks and retains his sense of humour and kindness, and looks for Kiva's company and attention, despite her cold shoulder and unfriendly demeanour.

There are not many more secondary characters that are worthy of remembering except for Naari, a female prison guard that does not take advantage of the prisoners and gives us some handicapped rep, Tipp a lovely young boy that Kiva gets attached to, despite knowing better and that gives us some stammer representation and the royal princes are not completely forgettable either, with the princess providing us with some LGBTQ rep.

Although I mostly liked Kiva and how she didn't conform to the nice, hopeful heroine trope, there was a certain "not like other girls" sense to her. She was always quick to tell herself and others how strong she was for being able to keep herself alive during the ten years she was incarcerated but apart from when she was dealing with people as a healer, she was utterly incapable of getting anything done by herself and she is called on that multiple times, with little internal growth. That became the most evident when it came to the elemental challenges that were certainly impossible to survive alone but she never tried to circumvent that herself, it was always other characters that either gifted her something or physically interfered in order for her to survive them.

The romantic pairing was fine for me, in a very heteronormative way. My greatest pet peeve is the world-building itself, wishing that there had been more prison day-to-day and characters to sink my teeth in because apart from the infirmary, the rest of the prison and world felt a bit unfinished.

If you are thinking about giving this book a chance, you should also know there are several instances where we see sexual assault and self-harm either happen on-page or are talked about which coupled with Kiva's age and this book is marketed as YA left a bad taste in my mouth with the way, these very delicate themes were addressed.

Conclusions

I started this book with very humble expectations and apart from a few brighter moments and the characters themselves I was never too surprised by whatever happened. I decided to finish it just not to add it to my TBR, only to be punched in the face by the last chapter and left completely aghast. I haven't googled a sequel's synopsis and release date so fast in a while. Now that was a plot twist worthy of making me come back for more and after reading the next book's synopsis, I am more than looking forward to it.

Rating: 3/5

P.S: here's the sequel's synopsis and release date if you are interested.