Vital Stats:
Book: Skin Hunger
Author: Kathleen Duey
Genre: YA fantasy
Review in long:
(contains a bit o' basic plot spoiling, but no details)
Maz, my co-worker and kindred spirit in YA reading, lent this one to me. I read the back of the book and it was a jumble. It starts out with two different main characters and each one, Sadima and Hahp, alternate chapters. Hahp is first person, Sadima is third person. It's a bit jarring, but the effect is good: it makes the book interesting enough to keep on reading. Which is what the first quarter of the book needs.
While Hahp's beginnings are pretty interesting (shipped off to a terrible wizarding school) Sadima's are pretty flippin' boring. Honestly, even with Hahp's interesting predicament, after I left the book a quarter of the way in, I didn't get back to it for a couple of days. It wasn't screaming to be read.
And then tonight I picked it up again. And read. and then KEPT READING, because the book gets so dark and twisted that you can't stop. It's not like gruesome things suddenly start happen, it's just that the book works its way into the world and the story deeper and deeper.
Character-wise I'm not super attached to either Sadima or Hahp, but their problems are so serious that I need to know what happens next.
Which is a shame, because the book completely DROPS at the end, as it is the first in a trilogy. EEP!
The second book is out, but she's still writing the third. I fully intend to get the second, and I can't wait to find out how much darker the story can get.
As Maz pointed out, it's a nice change in the world of magic. Most YA fantasies are not this dark, and even though evil people are about and bad things happen, the idea of whatever magic exists is still kind of "normal" and "happy." Skin Hunger is a bit more ... well, again, dark and twisted. Morbid?
I don't know, all I can say is I really liked how I got pulled in, and I really want to be pulled in even more.
Review in short:
a YA fantasy that appeals to me because it's dark. It's slow start and possible distant protagonists are made up for by having the twisted world it has. The duel stories help move the book along, and I can't wait to see how many more connections are made between the two.
Recommended, although that could change depending how the ending of the series goes.
Anything else?
Damn. I don't have Maz's phone number and she's not on Facebook. How the heck will she know I need her to bring me the second book?
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