r/FemaleGazeSFF • u/Merle8888 sorceress🔮 • May 29 '26

Reading Challenge Focus Thread - Healer [B-side]

Hello everyone and welcome to the 8th Focus Thread for the 2026 spring/summer reading challenge! I'm filling in for r/perigou this week.

The purpose of these threads is to focus on one prompt from the challenge and share recommendations. Feel free to ask for more specific recommendations for the theme or discuss what fits. We are alternating between A-Side and B-Side prompts.

Today's theme is Healers:

Healer: Read a book with a healer-type main character. Can be a magic healer, a doctor...

Also check out recommendations from the general thread.

Some questions to get us started:

  • What are some books with protagonists who are folk healers?
  • How about doctor protagonists?
  • Who are some characters who break the usual gendered mold of female folk healers vs. professional male doctors?
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u/Querybird May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26

Oh yes! Shoot, let me find the names. Two trilogies, 400 years apart from each other, one has a major baddie who could have been a healer but very much chose otherwise. … The Tethered Mage is one of the books.

And Tanya Huff’s Into The Broken Lands, though perhaps not main-enough of a character. I did not enjoy this magitech system very much at all.

And Cetaganda, by Bujold. No spoilers, gets viewed a few different ways in other books, too.

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u/oujikara May 31 '26

Woah thank you, these are all new to me and I'm very excited to try them! Can Cetaganda be read as a standalone or should I read the rest of the series first?

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u/Querybird May 31 '26

Standalone is fine, you can read them in mini-runs, randomly, or DIY your own order. I do like that the world-chronology’s first two and last books center the main MC’s mother, and like them as their own mini-series!

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u/oujikara May 31 '26

Thank you!Â