The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni is a story that follows a young woman named Kiva. As the title might suggest, Kiva is both an inmate and a healer at the most notorious death prison, Zalindov. Over the past ten years, she has done everything possible to keep a low profile and endure in a prison where most inmates don't last long. The plot takes off when the Rebel Queen arrives at the prison, terminally ill, and they charge Kiva with keeping her alive long enough for her to undergo the Trial by Ordeal.
However, smuggled in along with her sick body is a coded message from her family that states, “Don’t let her die. We are coming.” Knowing the trials will be the end of her, Kiva volunteers to be her champion and stands in her place. If she survives, they both go free and if she doesn’t...yeah.
The problem is the fact that no one has ever survived these trials. With an incurable plague sweeping the prison, a potential rebellion with the prison brewing, and a new mysterious inmate vying for her heart, Kiva has her work cut out for her.
World-Building
I’ll start with the positive and acknowledge that I loved a lot about this book. Being swept up in a story is something I have missed. Lately, with fantasy books, I’ve had the problem of running into books that don’t pull me in immediately. That’s not a deal breaker or anything. Most often the ones I stick with in spite of this I end up admiring and raving about, but this book was not one of those.
The concept didn’t initially entice me, but the Sarah J. Maas endorsement was all I needed to purchase the book. I remember reading it and being pulled in. The world-building was gravitational in that way. Kiva’s story was interesting. It felt like a cliché, but I have always loved a good cliché and this time was no exception.
There were so many amazing aspects to this story, my favorite being the prison characters’ stories. Lynette does a beautiful job of giving every character substance, giving their journey meaning. Even the side characters are people you can care about and form attachments to. Grendel, for example, we only get her for maybe two chapters, and my heart ached for her. Despite appearing in only two chapters, she made a lasting impression, and the story highlighted both her character and the prison's brutality.
I also have to acknowledge her writing style here. It’s enticing, and page-turning. It elicits this reticent vibe that has you eating up everything she gives you. She does a great job of giving the reader something to look forward to throughout the read and before you know it you’ve finished the entire thing in one sitting.
The Trials by Ordeal
Falling in love with it so quickly made the way in which this novel fell short feel even more vast. First and foremost, the trial by ordeals. These were so disappointing to me. When I hear "Trial by Air" or "Trial by Fire," I think of nuanced or intricate challenges. Like navigating spinning air panels or completing a task that would require finesse or maybe even intellect. Something as flushed out as these background stories were but no, instead she’s jumping off a cliff, or standing in an oven for ten minutes.
It’s fucking stupid. It reminds me of the tasks they would expect women to complete during the Salem Witch Trials. Like when they’d throw them in the ocean and tell them if they swam to the surface, they were a witch, but if they drowned, they weren’t. Like you can’t win for losing. It’s the same thing here. They literally throw her in a well with a weight on her ankle and tell her to stay under for like ten minutes.
It feels like lazy writing, like all the imagination and creativity was allocated toward one aspect of the book and the other got diminished effort as a result. Not to mention she completes none of them on her own. It feels like it stunts her character of the growth overcoming this situation would elicit. She has survived by keeping her head down and staying out of the way and this forces her to take things head on. I feel like that could have been transformative, but instead, she feels exactly where she started in the beginning in that regard.
Inconsistencies
Second is the fact that her ideals contradict themselves. She claims to be a healer who doesn’t see the person just their ailment. This mentality is what allows her to treat all patients regardless of their indiscretions. She then goes on to gloat about a misdiagnosis she prescribed to someone to worsen their symptoms because they upset her or did something. It doesn’t align and feels like a rule she consults only when she finds it convenient.
Third, is the matter of Jaren. His presence doesn’t make sense to me. Earlier in the book, Kiva describes the prisoners as not always being able to go to the healer and sometimes dying because of it. Not Jaren though, he literally just does whatever he wants. He’s everywhere, all the time. It’s weird and I feel like there needs to be more of a reason for it. Even when he reveals his identity, he spends all his time chasing her instead of chasing the cause.
Fourth, her family. This one might just be personal, but it might not be. Once she realized her family was stringing her along, she was not nearly angry enough for me. She kind of just swallows it and keeps going and I guess there’s nothing else that she can do at that moment but also this hope has kept her alive for ten entire years. There should be some more emotion as she comes to terms with the lie of it all.
The Plot Twists
Last but certainly not least, is the plot twist. There’s a couple to speak of. We’ll start with the warden and the disease. It feels like there could have been more build-up there. She establishes him as someone fair but practical and then everything we see from him after that shows him to be anything but those things. It splinters his character in a way that robs him of everything he could have been. I think setting him up to be someone more honorable would have made for a better twist in the end. The part where he acknowledges he was never actually planning to let them go, could have been all the more devastating. Again, it felt like lazy writing, like the author wanted to wrap the end up quickly instead of building up that anticipation.
Rebel Princess?
Kiva being the Rebel Princess made absolutely zero sense to me. There were so many times throughout the story where some foreshadowing could have taken place, and it didn’t. Especially at that initial meeting. I feel like there should have been some shock upon seeing her mother after ten years. Especially on the verge of death, but she treated her like any other patient, and this is so confusing to me.
Almost as confusing as seeing her dead on the table and being sadder about the wasted effort than the loss of a mother. Moreover, her mother was dying the entire novel, and she waits to use these very convenient healing powers on her little adopted rodent child. Also, if he was going to nearly die the first time, why make him nearly die a second time? I thought the first near-death experience would prompt her to solve the mystery of the tummy rash but no. He quite literally got sick, and it served no plot progressing purposes.
I think I might have been able to overlook everything else if not for this surprise ending. It did not match the story whatsoever and in my opinion, it felt like something added purely for shock value.
Overall
I give this story a 4.2 out of 10 stars. It’s a nice little read, but it falls just short of being something truly special.
