Set in Douglass's Wayfarer universe, this is a tale of a power struggle in the kingdom of Escator which leads to the teenaged heir's supposed demise. But what only a few know -- including the man who usurped the throne -- is that the death was faked. Prince Maximilian is consigned as Lot Number 859 to the Veins, dismal underground tunnels near the country's coastal areas where gloam, a mineral and Escator's major export, is mined. Only convicts work in the Veins, because no one will do it of their own free will. Claustrophobes might find the underground scenes in this book unsettling, because they're quite detailed and convincing.

The prince's "death" is evinced by scattered clothing found by a woodsman along with marks of a struggle. Maximilian is mourned, the king and queen later die without any direct heir and a distant cousin of the king, one Cavor, takes the throne. But he has a problem with his royal, heir-designating tattoo, which he received as an adult instead of as a child. It won't stop. . .suppurating. Something has a stench in Escator. And the man who was once the physician to the old king's family suspects more than that.

Joseph Baxtor is a Healer, one who can detect injury and disease and encourage healing with the Touch, a type of laying-on of hands. Joseph relocated to the smaller town of Narbon from the capitol city of Ruen after the old king's death. He and his wife later welcomed into the world their first and only son, Garth. The novel proper (there's a short prologue) opens with Joseph and Garth (with a more developed Touch than that of his father) working on one of Joseph's patients in Narbon. As Joseph gives Garth a lesson in how to detect a specific illness, Garth also gradually learns to accept the fact that a healer cannot save all his patients.

All physicians in Escator are required to either pay annual taxes or serve a term treating the prisoners in the Veins instead of paying the tax. Joseph goes to the Veins when summoned because he feels he cannot betray his Healing gift by not going. On his first visit to the Veins as a healer apprentice, Garth treats a prisoner's festering scar and learns more than he bargained for: his patient is the lost prince. The young healer is compelled to find a way to restore the cast-aside heir. Unable to decide how best to tell his family, he sets about it unbeknownst to them.

Dancing around the outside of this quest is a mythical figure called the Manteceros, a magical being who is the sole arbiter of who should rule Escator. The Manteceros uneasily grants this right to Cavor, and once Cavor and Maximilian contest for the throne, the Manteceros tries to keep them from physical combat and fails. This is an unusual take on the powers of a mythical being, and makes the story more interesting.

The marsh-dwelling mother and daughter Venetia and Ravenna are strangers to Garth when he first sees them while riding with his father on their journey to the Veins. But he and Ravenna later become part of a team that works to free Maximilian, to restore his health and strengthen his will enough to enable him to seek the reclamation of his rightful place as king of Escator. The marsh dwellers are mysterious to those not kin to them, and they wield powers unknown to Joseph and Garth. Despite this, bonds of trust grow between them as they help Maximilian learn to live above ground again, and to cross swords with Cavor for the throne.

What makes this novel worth reading, despite the too-light editorial hand, is that Douglass has devised a world where healing and magic have their prices, kings are made by trial and not only by birthright, and characters possess enough cultural and individual diversity that they are not immediately known or understood by all others. Douglass sets up an interestingly complex magic system that exhibits some actual thought beyond the templates used in cookie-cutter fantasy novels. Maximilian's reluctance to leave the world of the Veins, the only reality he's known since boyhood, is a very plausible and human element of his story. There's not much blood and thunder here; this is a more thoughtful tale.

This book has faults. Editorial work should have been concentrated in the first 50 pages, which is where Douglass repeats certain phrases too often and too close together. Naming a main character Maximilian is a bother at best; one has difficulty imagining someone shouting that name in warning, and calling a prince Max just doesn't sound right.

Oddly, the reader is never told the use of gloam. It's black and creates dust and kills the mine workers sooner than they'd die otherwise, and that's all the reader gets. By inference, it seems the reader is supposed to equate gloam with coal. Douglass's writing website mentions only that it's a mineral. Lacking further information, one is led to conclude that gloam was invented as something to dig up, and not as an integral part of Escator's economy.

Theses details chip away at that all-important suspension of disbelief required to immerse oneself in fantasy worlds; chip too much away and that little bridge collapses. This novel doesn't quite do that, but the little gaps make the mind itch, just a bit.

The fact that this is a stand-alone fantasy novel is worth noting all on its own. Such novels are rarities nowadays, since multi-volume fantasy series continue to sell well despite critical name-calling (before it got to be more than three books in a series, it was called committing trilogy -- interesting connotations there). While Beyond the Hanging Wall has some defects, it also has an involving story and characters who draw the reader into Douglass's vividly constructed Wayfarer world.

J.G. Stinson has been reading speculative fiction for more than 35 years. No brag, just fact.