Customer Reviews

Healer

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first read this book some 20 years ago, and it has haunted me ever since. I truely wonderful bit of sci-fi spanning time, space and mortality. Whilst it was in my possession I read it many many times, but made the unfortunate mistake of lending it to someone, never to see it again. Some time later I discovered the LaNague chronicles (encapsulating "Healer") and got the book. Whilst Healer remains my all time favorite, LaNague is almost as good a read. Should anyone know of or have contact with Mr F Paul Wilson, would they extend my thanks, and plead with him on my behalf to put pen to paper (or fingers to key-board) and produce further "Steve & pard" novels, as there is far to much meat on this bone to let them off travelling the universe and time in just one book!

I have always liked this book since I found it in a second-hand book store years ago (Why anyone would want to dump this book is beyond me). I keep coming back to it and re-reading it just to immerse myself in the imaginative and well-written tale of an ordinary man who has immortality unexpectedly thrust upon him. How he deals with this and the huge scale of the book (both in time and space) make for a great read.

For some reason, this book has always stuck in my head, long after reading it. After an encounter with aliens, a man becomes functionally
immortal, even gaining some redundancy in bodily organs. He also has enhanced perception, reflexes, and mental abilities. He received these
abilities in a bizarre meld with an alien cave creature that in general, would kill sentient life forms, but his merging made him superhuman.

With these useful talents, he goes adventuring to utilise his medical talents and superhuman abilities to stop a very virulent disease sweeping the galaxy, and find the powerful being that is the root cause.

I first read this book some 20 years ago, and it has haunted me ever since. I truely wonderful bit of sci-fi spanning time, space and mortality. Whilst it was in my possession I read it many many times, but made the unfortunate mistake of lending it to someone, never to see it again. Some time later I discovered the LaNague chronicles (encapsulating "Healer") and got the book. Whilst Healer remains my all time favorite, LaNague is almost as good a read. Should anyone know of or have contact with Mr F Paul Wilson, would they extend my thanks, and plead with him on my behalf to put pen to paper (or fingers to key-board) and produce further "Steve & pard" novels, as there is far to much meat on this bone to let them off travelling the universe and time in just one book!

Pard is a perfect analog to the coming "shared conciousness" that machines will offer us.

Justifies the 5 star rating over time. Deeply moving on many fronts over the years..

A great read for ages 10 & up, I wholey recommend adding this to your Library & read-list. Worth re-reading every few years.

Good ethics, fine morals, confronting action.

One of F. Paul Wilson's finer early works..

Mandatory sci-fi qualifications - "Have you read The Healer, Paul Wilson? Please describe Pard.."

There were so many humorous aspects of the book that I found myself laughing out loud as Steve attempted to assert his individuality by preventing Pard from correcting several errors he committed BEFORE he used Steve's hands and eyes (while Steve slept, unaware) to read and learn all he could of human physiology from a huge stack of anatomy books. Some years later, during an interview I conducted with Mr. Wilson, I learned that "The Healer" was his own least favorite - a fact I could not understand. It remains, however, my favorite of all time, and I wish it could be re-issued in audio, since my failing eyesight prevents me from reading it again.

Iread this novel 22 years ago and loved it. If you love freedom
and sci-fi you've got to read this book. And if you're a gun nut
you'll love the shotgun Steve and Pard use in the ending; and the planet Flint!

If I had read this book when I was fourteen, I would have loved it. Reading it as an adult, it was ok. However, the conversion into an ebook was very sloppily done, and evidently there was no proofreading. The margins were often off, and worst of all there were things like "meta& shy; bolic" as an example of unsupervised OCR scanning. Still, I guess at $2.99 you get what you pay for.

I read this book when I was young and still read it every few years to relive the magic. About a man who finds immortality unexpectantly, and then has to figure out what to do with it and how to fit in socially through time when nobody knows what he has. The climax is a bit lame, but this doesn't detract from a brilliant read.

I polished this off quickly. Although short, a great read with libertarian theme and message of individualism running through it. I look forward to the re-release "Lanagae Chronicles" which has this book plus his next two on this theme