Shaman
novel
*** Let's get this clear now: the MC is a trans woman. This is not a gender-bender. It's set in a fantasy world but the exploration of identity and gender is reality-based. Not a joke, not a kinky turn-on. If this is a problem for you, please just act like an adult and look elsewhere for something to read. *** Rating breakdown, since that should be public info: 2 x 5*, 1 x 4.5*, 1 x 3*, no reasons offered. A human shaman and healer returns from several years with the mysterious shyani, accompanied by her shapeshifting puma best friend. A valued friend, from her previous identity as a male student physician, has acquired an old shyani book, and extremists will not tolerate its presence in human hands. But back in human lands, the question arises: which world does she belong in? Generations ago, human explorers found a continent inhabited by an utterly alien culture of shapeshifting weyres and the shyani, humanoids who prefer dusk and dawn. A truce of sorts was eventually reached: humans claimed the rich lowlands, and the shyani and weyres retain the highlands. Along the border, practicality often rules, but on either side, old grudges linger in some hearts. As a student physician, Corin tried to take his own life, unable to bear the countless tiny wounds inflicted over twenty-one years of lying to himself in order to be, or pretend to be, socially acceptable. At the last improbable instant, intervention came, in the form of a spirit fox, who led him away from the existence he’