Review: SHAMAN, HEALER, HERETIC by M. Terry Green

Amazon buy link: http://www.amazon.com/Shaman-Healer-Heretic-ebook/dp/B004KAAUUG

4 of 5 stars

Olivia (Livvy) Lawson is a modern-day techno shaman. She uses technologically enhanced googles (the God Helmet) to help guide her through the different realms of the spirit world and she is blessed with a unique spirit helper—lightening. She is barely making ends meet and things go from bad to worse the day a supernatural kachina, an ancient Hopi god, shows up in her apartment. Livvy ignores the god and he melts back into the spiritual world. The kachina is a sign, but Livvy doesn’t understand what his message means and she doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it with anyone, not even her shaman broker. However, when a number of other shamans start dying, Livvy has no choice, but to enlist LK’s aid and the aid of every shaman living in the Los Angeles area. 

This book opens with a bang and caught my interest immediately. The author does a great job in pulling the reader into the story chapter after chapter. The character of Livvy is well fleshed out—a technologically gifted shaman, but a shy and social inept young woman. There are tidbits in the story of Livvy’s attending medical school, but there is no further explanation of why she dropped out. Was the life of a shaman more appealing or did something happen to force Livvy out of medical school?  I was disappointed when nothing more was revealed in this book, but perhaps that will happen in the next book.

The shaman broker LK was my favorite character. He may be a dwarf, but he’s one well-dressed guy with his tailored suits and custom Italian shoes. He knows all the shamans in and around LA—their strengths, their weaknesses—and is the one that is instrumental in helping Livvy contact everyone to help solve the problems in the middleworld. The author does a superb job in describing the unique cast of shamans and their spirit helpers.  Each is different and brings an added flair to the story.

The one character I did not connect with is the paramedic, Joel. I don’t feel he added anything to the plot and it seemed to me that he was introduced into the story for an easy fix. I think the story was solid without him and his scenes could be deleted from the book without affecting the flow of the story.

All in all, this was a very inventive and interesting story. I would definitely like to read the next book and see what new adventures await Livvy. Recommended.