Friday, February 22, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey




Skin Hunger is the first in an incomplete trilogy by Kathleen Duey, her "A Resurrection of Magic" trilogy.  Unfortunately, the author, due to medical issues I won't go into here, is unable to finish the trilogy, so the story will never actually be finished (a second book was published, but the third was still incomplete at the time of her ailment).  Still, a reviewer I like suggested the book and maybe its sequel were still worth reading, so I put it on my library reserve list, with the hope that what was complete would be a satisfying read on its own.

Unfortunately, that's not really the case.  Skin Hunger is certainly interesting, with a pair of main characters who are really well written and easy to root for, and a dual narrative structure that kept me interested throughout.  But it's clearly the first book in a longer story, with the story ending at a point that might represent the end of an arc of the longer narrative, but not one that allows it to stand alone.  So is this worth reading?  Hard to say, but definitely not if you'd like to read a story with some sense of a satisfying resolution.


---------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Sadima's mother died birthing her, while a "magician" her brother had paid to help stole all of her family's belongings.  As a result, her brother and father have always hated the charlatans who pretend to use magic, and disbelieve Sadima when she tries to tell them of her own seemingly supernatural abilities - such as the ability to talk to animals.  And when a young man named Franklin comes to tell her of his and his companion Somiss' plans to learn magic, Sadima finds herself attracted to the possibility - so when her father dies she sets out to do just that.  But as Sadima spends her time around Franklin and Somiss, and begins to learn old songs and the meaning of letters, she finds that Somiss is interested only in his own discoveries at any cost - and that Franklin, who she comes to love, is unable to leave him.

Unlike Sadima, Hahp lives in a world where magic is well known to be real, and wizards are cryptic but feared.  As the lesser son of a wealthy merchant, he finds himself one of ten boys abandoned to a sequestered school to train wizards.  But what he soon finds out is that the study at the school is anything but pleasant, with the wizard Franklin, and the sinister and creepy wizard Somiss, informing them that of the ten boys, only one will leave the academy a wizard....or none of them will.  And they mean it - for to fail at their studies is to starve....potentially to death, and no helping each other will be tolerated.....Will Hahp be able to learn magic? Or will he die trying to do so?  And does he even want to understand what the academy is trying to teach him in the first place?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As you can see from the plot summary above, Skin Hunger has a dual narrative, with chapters alternating between the stories of Sadima and that of Hahp.  It becomes apparent rather quickly, thanks to the appearance of Franklin and Somiss in both stories, that Hahp's story takes place well after Sadima's, and the result is that the reader - well myself at least - is very easily drawn into wondering what happened in Sadima's story, or afterwards, to change the world so much and to change Franklin and Somiss to what they are for Hahp.  It also filled me with a deadly sense of foreboding, because there's no hint of Sadima in Hahp's time, which suggests bad things have happened to her.

This is made more effective by how strong both Sadima and Hahp are as characters, as they find themselves in very different situations.  In another book, Sadima, gifted with the ability to read the thoughts of animals from birth, would be some sort of "chosen one," but she absolutely isn't - nor does she want to be.  Instead, she simply wants to be with the one person who respects and understands her ability is real in Franklin, and wants to help him....and wants to be with him when she falls in love with him.  She's independent in her aims - not willing to simply do what she's told when she can try and do more and to learn more - but at the same time limited by Franklin's insistence upon not leaving Somiss.  It's frustrating because you want her to be happy, but the situation just won't let her be - which is of course frustrating for her as well.

Hahp on the other hand just wanted a choice, to have food and comfort and to be able to live a normal life, and being thrown into this magic school which threatens him with death if he doesn't learn things he cannot understand is maybe the worst fate he could have imagined.  Which is not to say it wouldn't be a terrible fate for anyone - and Duey makes it a chilling setting inside the academy.  But Hahp's feelings and frustrations, his intelligence as he figures things out (while not always figuring out everything), make him really easy to care about.  And while we don't see too much of his other classmates aside from his roommate, the book generally makes you care about them as well.

Where both Hahp and Sadima's stories are similar is in how both of them are placed into abusive relationships that they struggle to get out of.  In Sadima's case, this is at least a little bit by choice - she's fallen in love with Franklin as the only person who can possibly understand and appreciate her gifts, but Franklin is unable to will himself to leave Somiss despite Somiss' emotionally abusive treatment, and so she finds herself similarly trapped.  Hahp is more physically trapped and abused, but faces the emotional abuse through his teachers (Franklin and Somiss years later) and the other classmates as they each essentially abuse each other through their own doubts and fears.  Duey does an excellent job with both of these stories in showing the emotional traumas the characters find themselves facing, making this a hard read for sure, but one in which I wanted to go on to see if they could find a way out.

Still, these two stories are very much separate and they don't intersect at all in this novel, with the story basically just ending in the middle - without any sort of major climax ever occurring in either story.  The result is unsatisfying honestly - while many trilogies start out with a book that could stand on its own,, or at the very least contain a major climax 75-90% of the way through such that you feel like you've read a significant part of plot, Skin Hunger opts for neither path.  The result is that this feels quite clearly like merely a part of a whole, with nothing resolved whatsoever and the book's major question - "What happened between the times of Sadima and Hahp?" - not getting any form of an answer whatsoever.  Which is especially frustrating considering the series will never be finished.

So yeah, I think I won't read the sequel to this one, Sacred Scars, because I can't imagine the ending will be more satisfying.  Alas, because the seeds planted here in this first book are so interesting, but I guess that's just how it is.


Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)