Pain Merchants is a fantasy with all the right ingredients

Oct 9 2009 by Paul Fulford, Birmingham Post

The Pain Merchants (HarperCollins, £12.99)

Nya has a secret – she is a Taker. She can draw out pain from people’s bodies and contain it within her own bones. She can also shift pain – moving it from one person to another.

This makes the 15-year-old a very dangerous person in the eyes of the occupying forces of her city.

She cannot join the Healers’ League, like her younger sister Tali, and the pain merchants are also unhappy that she displays these skills.

The starving orphan knows that both her and her sister’s lives depend on her keeping this forbidden talent secret, but when she misguidedly helps someone out when her attempt to steal a couple of eggs goes wrong, she knows she has made a critical error. Because unlike those in the Healers’ League, she has no access to the precious metal pynvium into which the extracted pain can go. She can only transfer it to other people.

With war raging in her city, it is only a matter of time before the invaders discover her deadly secret and force her to use it against her people. But when her sister disappears mysteriously, she is forced into making some of the most difficult choices she has ever had to make.

Janice Hardy’s book is enticing in every way. Nya is fallible, yet brave; vulnerable, but strong. This is fantasy writing at its best. The plot is strong, it raises ethical questions and there are racial tensions between the underdog Gevegs (to whom Nya belongs) and the sneering Baseeri that merit questions.

I’m looking forward to the sequel – the adventure has only just started.

Jayne Howarth