Skin hunger, by Kathleen Duey

Micah’s breath scraped in and out of his lungs; his feet were clodded with road-mud. He laboured past the agate-eyed cows in the apple orchards along the River Road; then, at the edge of town, he climbed Mattie Han’s rail fence. Running heavy-legged, he cut between her thatch-roofed house and her market garden. Going down the long hill towards the square, his chest aching, the downward slope shoved him along and he let it, barely managing to stay upright. Every step was a jerking effort not to fall face-first into the dirt. On High Street, he finally stumbled to a stop.

Hands on his knees to ease his gasps, Micah scanned the close-packed crowds below him. There had to be a magician here this market day.

Oooh. I liked this one. A lot.

Skin hunger is the first in Kathleen Duey’s new series, A resurrection of magic. The story is told from the perspectives of two characters in alternating chapters.

Sadima lives in a world in which magic has deteriorated and become outlawed, although some are working to restore it. She meets Franklin who recognises a gift that Sadima possesses and promises her the opportunity to develop it. Sadima is then drawn into the lives of Franklin and his cold, harsh companion Somiss and the task to which they have dedicated themselves.

The alternate chapters are set several hundred years later. The world of magic has been restored and those who can afford it use magic as a regular part of life. Potential magicians are sent to a cold, brutal, and life threatening Academy of Magic. Hahp is one of them.

Duey has constructed a fascinating scenario and the two stories interweave brilliantly with little connections popping up through the story that kept making me say, “aaaahhh”, which got some weird looks on the train. The chapters are quite short and this, along with my eagerness to see where the author was taking me made it hard to put down. The writing is fantastic, the characters and their relationships are also portrayed very well and the structure and mechanics of the story and the world in which it is set really worked for me.

Are you getting the impression that I liked this book? It is fantastic. Definitely one of the best books I have read this year. It really worked for me.

One thing to keep in mind with this book: it is definitely part of a series. Sometimes the ending of a book in a series sees the hero complete an adventure and resolve the story into a nice ending, ready for the next adventure in the next book, with some overarching development through the series. The end of Skin hunger didn’t have this feel. It felt like the end of the first part of the story, the first chapter of the adventure. This is not a negative, just something to be aware of as the second book does not yet exist, so we will have to wait to pick up the story.

Skin hunger is an amazing book. I loved it. Pick it up and give it a try.