Thursday, May 22, 2014

Shaman, Healer, Heretic (Olivia Lawson, Techno-Shaman #1) - M. Terry Green

I loved this book, and was so glad to find out it's the first in a series.

Olivia Lawson, known as Livvy, is a former med student who now works as a shaman, healing people in a different way. She uses special goggles to go into a trance state so she can venture to the Middle World and talk the spirits of dying people into coming back. It doesn't pay very well, and people are suspicious of her work. Even some of her clients think shamanism is next to Satanism.

She awakens one night to find a kachina -- an honest-to-goodness Hopi Indian god -- standing over her bed. That should be impossible. There's no way any beings from the other side can get through to this reality.

At the same time, shamans have begun dying while in the other world. Livvy gets the idea that all the techno-shamans should band together to cross the divide and find out what's going on. She talks her boss, SK, into helping her pull everybody together -- a tricky feat, as shamans work alone.

Somebody's spreading rumors that the shamans are responsible for bad things that are happening on this plane, making her job even harder. To top it off, there's a paramedic who seems to have taken a shine to her -- but can she trust him?

Livvy's a great character. Her angst is believable, and I felt sorry for her when she seemed to have trouble convincing the other shamans to help. I did wish the author had mentioned Livvy's ability to jury-rig electronics sooner, but you can't have everything.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

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