Telekinetic (#1 in The Hyllis Family Stories)

“Telekinetic” is the first of a series of post-apocalyptic stories featuring the Hyllis family. The collapse of civilization has reduced their people back to iron and horsepower.
The Hyllises tend to inherit “tele-talents” such as telekinesis and teleportation. Tarc Hyllis’ mother (and his grandfather before her) could “feel” things with their talent. They became healers because they could feel inside their patients, which frequently let them diagnose the underlying causes of an illness. Having made a diagnosis, unfortunately, there was often little they could do to treat a problem.
Tarc’s father can “push” objects with his mind, but, because he can’t feel inside anything, he doesn’t know where to exert force in order to help to treat his wife’s patients.
Tarc’s just gaining the ability to do both of these things. The combination of these two powers will let him both diagnose a physical problem such as internal bleeding, and then stop that bleeding by applying pressure inside the patient. His mother finds this development extraordinarily exciting. She has too often had to watch her patients die for lack of an effective treatment.
Then some strangers show up to scout the town where the Hyllises live. They plan and initiate a violent takeover. Could Tarc’s powers, weak as they are, play a role in resisting this invasion?
It turns out he can guide a knife after it’s thrown…

Featured Reviews

Amazing

I’m a strong fan of Laurence Dahners’ work but avoided this series of four books to date, its medical subject matter being less interesting to me than the more physics or math oriented ones.

What a mistake!

This story of a family in a post-apocalyptic world is extremely well plotted and written, and highly engaging. All the trademark Dahners touches are there, but the focus on a family treated as more or less equally gifted from the start adds a different dimension to his other stories that begin with a single remarkable individual. Another dimension is that this story has a basis in Dahners' own professional skill set and knowledge. Taken together, this means his treatment of the emotions, interactions and learning journey of the Hyllis family has more depth and breadth than is possible with one exceptional individual, where the focus tends to be on their singular heroic struggle.

Needless to say, I am about to download and read the rest of this absorbing series.