Children of the Healer, Godfall (03) by Barbara Ann Wright

Life becomes desperate for ex-soldier Cordelia Ross when the indigenous aliens of her planet are drawn into a civil war, and old enemies linger in the shadows.
With the Storm Lord dead, Cordelia Ross and Simon Lazlo return to Gale, to normality, but when they find the populace poisoned by the drushka, it's clear the aliens must be dealt with before life can be anything near normal. In the north, Patricia Dué takes control of Gale's mine with Jonah, the servant she created in Dillon Tracey's old body. She thinks controlling the humans' only source of metal will bring her power, but her past won't be banished so easily.
Amidst the chaos and conflict, a prophet predicts that true calamity is still to come, and the only way to stop it may be a murderous widow looking for revenge. As factions splinter and reconnect, the fate of Calamity lies uncertain, and even the prophets can't see every ripple on the horizon.


Barbara Ann Wright writes fantasy and science fiction novels and short stories when not adding to her enormous book collection or ranting on her blog. Her short fiction has appeared twice in Crossed Genres Magazine and once made Tangent Online's recommended reading list. Her first novel, The Pyramid Waltz, was one of Tor.com's Reviewer's Choice books of 2012 and was a 2012 Foreword Review Book of the Year Award Finalist as well as a Golden Crown Award finalist. It won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Fantasy and made BookRiot's 100 Must-Read Sci-Fi Fantasy Novels By Female Authors. She's won five other Rainbow Awards, has been a Goldie finalist, and Coils was a finalist in the 2017 Lambda Awards.