At first Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she's faced with some difficult choices. Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. Read 491 reviews from the world's largest community for readers.

She pushes her luck too far and exposes her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purposes. The Shifter by Janice Hardy The Shifter book. Rumors of another war make Nya's life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She is also a Taker - with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another. When I first started writing my middle grade fantasy, The Shifter: The Healing Wars (Balzer & Bray, 2009), I had no idea it was going to be a trilogy. Those of us who write fiction know that we're basically schizophrenics with. If discovered, she'd be used as a human weapon against her own people. Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. Who's Behind It: Janice Hardy, author of The Shifter series. All she can do is shift it into another person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. But unlike her sister, Tali, and the other Takers who become Healers' League apprentices, Nya's skill is flawed: She can't push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. She is also a Taker - with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body.