Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey

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Audience: Young Adult

Rating: B+

Synopsis:

Sadima has innate magical ability during a time where it is forbidden. Hahp lives in a time where magic is revered but the process of learning it can be deadly. This book tells the story of each of their lives and begins to explore how their stories overlap. This book is the beginning of what promises to be a magical, engaging series.

Chatter:

(Spoiler Alerts! ) Duey does a fabulous job of having cliffhanger endings to her chapters. The alternations between the two time periods kept me engaged and every time she switched settings at a critical moment I wanted to scream… or at least read faster. Duey is also a master of building internal conflict. I could really understand the motivations and external pressures that each of them faced and how it shaped their actions. Not that I always agreed with them…

Franklin needs to escape. Sadima is absolutely right in her assessment of sadistic Somiss, but I think Franklin is equally right that there is no escape for him. I hate the idea that hundreds of years later, he’s still trapped under Somiss’s control. I wonder how much he’s been tortured in the intervening years and how much torture he’s been forced to inflict.

Hahp’s prison is similar. I have such pity for the environment he’s been trapped into – a world of silence and suffering where he must watch other’s pain without helping. Duey does an amazing job of making the reader feel Hahp’s internal conflict. Is it really necessary to create such deprivation and secrecy in order to create a wizard? Are Somiss’s rules and regulations to better the world of magic? It seems like they’re really just to promote himself – the whole book praising the ‘founder’s infinite wisdom’ and the rule against Franklin’s pet project: silent speech. These all make me even more wary of Somiss.

The ending was hard to take… both because it felt incomplete, but also because I know I have to wait for the sequel to come out. Sacred Scars is not yet available for pre-order (because Duey’s not done writing it yet), but I can’t wait to reserve my copy when it is.

Questions:

Why do you think the book is titled Skin Hunger?

What will happen to Sadima between her story and Franklin’s?
Will Franklin ever try to leave Somiss?

Will the boys at the academy succeed in surviving to be wizards?

Keep reading!

Paige