Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey

I knew this day would come.  The day when someone would recommend a book to me and I would just completely dislike it.  It would be a slog to get through.  I would have to force myself to stay positive and not slip into old habits of blaming the entire genre of fiction, then reaching for that copy of The Stalin Cult that's been sitting on my nightstand for a month, taunting me like a devil on my shoulder, whispering in my ear and crooking a finger at me in a "come hither" manner.

Skin Hunger was that book.  I've been dreading writing this book review for days, weeks even, when it became clear to me that I just was not going to like this book.  In the time I've been struggling to finish Skin Hunger, which is not that long of a book, I finished reading Wonderstruck and listening to Between Shades of Grey.  It was recommended to me as a "personal favorite" by a Children's Librarians whom I like and respect very much.  Here's hoping he takes professional disagreement well (I think he probably does).

The plot of Skin Hunger is pretty simple.  There are two intertwining storylines, like in Wonderstruck.  A boy is forced by his unloving father into a school for wizards, which is abusive and which he may or may not survive.  The other story, which takes place earlier in time, revolves around a girl who is due to circumstance (and the death of her unloving father) into fleeing her rural life to the city, where because of her natural magical abilities she joins up with the two future magician founders of the school the boy will eventually join.  Oh, and the wizards are abusive to her as well.  And the father of one of the wizards is trying to hunt him down.  (There are definite father issues at work in this book.)

My main gripe with Skin Hunger is the ludicrously slow-moving plot.  The boy has joined the school and the girl has run away within about the first 75 pages of the book.  Then, for about two hundred pages, nothing happens.  At the wizard school, they don't feed you unless you can do magic, which makes the main plot tension "will the boy starve to death or will he not."  In the case of the girl, who (of course) falls in love with one of the magicians, the main plot tension is "will the magician run away with her or will he not."  This one is especially frustrating, because the second magician is constantly abusive to both of them, verbally and physically.  But the one magician is beholden to the other one, and the girl is beholden to the magician that she (of course) is in love with, so nothing every happens.  Not unlike the "will they or won't they" tension felt between Ross and Rachel over ten years of Friends, sometimes you just want to grab the characters and SHAKE THEM and tell them to JUST DO IT ALREADY.  Note to authors: for maximum plot tension, consider inserting a few twists into your plot.  Do not just place two characters apart from each other, and move them closer to each other, then further away, then closer, and then end the book without resolving anything.

That, specifically, is what killed me about Skin Hunger.  At the end of the book, the characters are in the exact same positions as they were at the beginning.  It's built right into the plot.  The boys at the wizard school aren't allowed to help each other, or even really talk to each other, so it's basically impossible to build anything resembling relationships between them.  They go to class, they fail at class, they go back to their rooms.  Then we check in with the other plot line.  Then we come back to the boys, who do it all over again.  Then, three hundred pages later, the book is over.  Except for it's not!  Because it's the first book in a trilogy.

Let me talk about the main "plot twist" that occurs at the end of the book.  If you're worried about spoilers (and if you are, I need to seriously work on my book reviewing skills), stop reading right here.  At the end of the girl's plot, she uncovers the fact that the two wizards have been keeping children in a cave, starving them, apparently the better to teach them magic.  However, we as readers saw this coming, or should have, because the boy's plot line talked about nothing except for how the same two wizards are now operating a school where they, wait for it, starve children, the better to teach them magic.  TWIST!  Or it would have been, if the author hadn't scooped herself two hundred pages earlier.  Because of how the book is set up, we already know that the two wizards will succeed in restoring magic to the land, will set up a school, and will continue to be abusive to children, essentially making redundant half of the entire book.

I honestly sat down to write this review intending to be as positive as I could, but now I see that I have excoriated this book.  Chris Koppenhaver, if you're reading this, I'm really sorry, but I had to be honest.  I am so glad to not be reading this book anymore.

There are many, many books that I would suggest you read before Skin Hunger.  Two of them follow.  If you want a well-written fiction book about magic being restored to the land, check out Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  Its plot is pretty glacial as well, but stuff does happen, and Susanna Clarke is an infinitely better and more imaginative writer than Kathleen Duey.  If you want a YA novel about kids being forced into abusive environments, read Sold by Patricia McCormick, which is the extremely moving (and largely fact-based) account of a young girl from Nepal who is sold into sexual slavery.  It's both moving and educational.

Ok, that's over.  Onward and upward!