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June 2007 from Atheneum Books.. .a trilogy for teen and adult readers, Excerpt below. I am blogging the writing process when I can: http://kathleenduey.blogspot.com/
art copyright David Ho 2006
A RESURRECTION OF MAGIC:
Skin Hunger
2007 National Book Award finalist
Holly Black
“Beautifully written, fierce, and unforgettable."
Donna Jo Napoli
“Wow, what a ride…this is the first of a trilogy, and all I can say is that I hope the next one comes out soon. I'll be sleepless tonight, wondering what happened to dear Sadima and doomed (or apparently so) Hahp.”
Nancy Farmer:
“Skin Hunger is not only well-paced with compelling characters, but it’s complete all-out entertainment. Original, too. Never have wizards appeared so foul or their apprentices so tormented…Duey presents a completely realized world you can sink into and never want to leave. I highly recommend it.”
see full text journal reviews
Read an EXCERPT:
S K I N H U N G E R
by
kathleen duey
CHAPTER ONE
Micah’s breath scraped in and out of his lungs; his feet were clodded with road-mud. He labored past the agate-eyed cows in the apple orchards along 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 toward 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. There nearly always was, sometimes two or three. Micah’s eyes blurred with tears and sweat. He wiped them clear with a balled fist.
There?
He straightened up, staring. Beyond the tangle of wagons and carts in the pasture below the stock pens, he caught a second glimpse of swinging black robes and went on, down the steep bank that separated High Street from Market Row, sliding the last few feet into the road. A cart horse shied and a Gypsy in indigo shouted and raised his tattooed fist. Micah found his feet and ran again, going straight into the maze of tents and farmers’ booths, pushing past fruit carts and women selling bolts of bright cloth.
The magician had drawn a little crowd. Micah lurched toward her, the sound of his own rushing breath muting her voice as she spoke to the people gathered around her. She was holding up a deep blue vial for all to see. Micah wriggled through the crowd and stood before her, staring up at the drawing of a slender-stemmed herb on the paper label.
“My mother…” he managed, then had to stop, his chest heaving.“My moth—”
The old magician glared at him. “Hush!”
“You…you have to…” Micah stopped again. He had meant to shout. It came out a whisper. He tipped his face upward, aiming the words. “Please. Come. Please.”
The old woman smiled. “Once I am finished here. These good people want to buy my tonics.”
“No, you have to come now,” Micah said, finding his voice. The magician didn’t even glance at him. She had raised the blue bottle and was talking over his head. He grabbed at her sleeve. Annoyed, she jerked it free, stepping back, and dropped the bottle. It shattered on the cobblestones. Micah stared at the shards of blue glass. Only the stopper was whole, spinning in a slow circle. He looked up. The magician loomed over him, her hand lifted high, her eyes hard and angry. Micah flinched and raised one arm to protect his face.
“What’s wrong with you? That boy needs help!” a woman shouted. “Can't you see that?” Micah heard more voices—they sounded angry. The magician’s face softened abruptly and she reached to pat Micah’s cheek, then grasped his hand, hard. She leaned close. “Make one more sound and I won’t come. Do you hear?” He nodded, staring at her hand on his. He would remember, all of his life, her yellowed fingernails, rimmed in black—little half moons of filth.
CHAPTER 2
When I was eleven years old, my father decided to get rid of me. I don’t think he gave a crap if I lived or died—he just wanted to stop looking at me. Waiting for the carriage that morning, I stared westward through the steam rising off the river mouth. Beyond it, across the delta and the still-water marshes on the other side, the night-torches in the South-End slums of Limori were being snuffed out.
Once the eye-burning stench of the greasewood was gone, the beggars would swarm back to the boardwalk. But by then the shopkeepers’ dogs would be off their leashes. Most were half-wolf. All were underfed. Some nights, when I knew my father was angry enough to hurt me, I crawled up the tree outside my window to get to the roof. I could usually hear them barking from up there. Once in a while, I heard someone scream. It always gave me shivers—how could people live there? Aben went up to the roof with me once. Not to hide from our father, but for the adventure. My brother never had to hide.
“Hahp?” I turned. My mother was wearing one of her dim little smiles. She was holding herself straight, moving with exaggerated, fluid grace, looking vapid, which meant she was frantic with worry over me. And fear of my father.
“Are you all right?” she asked in a near whisper, as though the sound of her voice would be enough to ignite my father. He was faced away, but I knew by the set of his shoulders that she was right to be careful. He was not far from one of his rages. I nodded, then looked past her at the house. If the stories were true, I might not ever see it again.
The expansive slate roof angled in every direction, covering the three wings of the old house, all its eaves dripping in the mist. It was a whole world, that roof, and I knew every inch of it, every broken slate, every patch of slick moss. I would miss the brittle smell of the wet stone when it rained. The salt pines on the far side of the grounds were gray-green in the early light. I would miss them, too. I had often played there. My father rarely walked that way.
There was a cold-fire lantern shining from a window in the servants’ wing. I counted. Fifth from the tower—Celia was awake. She was always up early. She sang softly, almost constantly, as she fed fires, kneaded dough, ground herbs, made pies. No one ever made better griddle-cakes. No one ever made me feel as safe. All my life, she had let me hide in the kitchen beneath the stone pastry table. My mother was cold to her, always finding fault with her work, but I loved her.
I caught a glimpse of movement behind the sheer window drape. Celia was dressing. I blushed and turned away. The sea-gravel that paved the carriage path grated beneath my boots and my father glanced at me. I stared out at the water like I hadn’t noticed. I was used to missing Celia and her cooking. I was used to being hauled off to schools. I usually liked it. I liked living away from my father. But this time was different.
“The carriage is ready, sir!”
The stableman’s call made me look; it was the white stallion this morning, of course, harnessed in black leather. He was pulling a carriage I had never seen before. There were silver vines curling over the dark wood, the leaves and thorns wrought in great detail, polished bright. I glanced at my father. Had the carriage been made for this occasion? How long had he known?
I watched the driver pat the horse’s neck—Gabardino handled horses gently, and I was glad. I had loved the white colt, had often watched him racing around the pasture with the rest of the spring foals. He was a Malek-Cross—a careful braiding of three ancient breeds. They trained well and had no fear of height. Malek Farms had a stablemaster of great skill—my father. He sold the Malek-Cross colts for what he called a filthy profit, all but the rare white ones. He was keeping those for himself—he had this stud, one mare, and a barely weaned filly now. In ten years, he would have a herd of them.
The pony was immaculate, of course, his dark hooves rubbed with beeswax. He never got dirty anymore. Rainwater hadn’t touched his skin in three years. His neck was arched and he tossed his mane. But his eyes were opaque—dead. It always happened with the training.
Pulling the stallion to a halt, Gabardino leapt down to help my mother. Her beaded slippers barely touched the mount-step. Her silk dress shushed against the polished wood. Father climbed up after her and made an impatient sound as she took a moment to arrange the billowing fabric of her skirts. I sat on the rear bench, across from my parents, fighting the fear crawling inside me. My father had made it very clear; I had no choice. I looked north toward the bay. It was silver gray this morning, the flat color of a parlor mirror before the lamps are lit.
I shivered and glanced at Gabardino. He was unwinding the reins from the silver cleat, holding them loosely, giving the pony his head. The carriage began to roll forward. The stallion trotted, then cantered, his milky tail streaming out behind. Then, at a command from Gabardino, the pony leapt upward, pulling the carriage into the air.
“Hahp,” my father said. “Sit up straight.”
I stiffened my spine and bit at my lower lip, feeling the pain anchor me to reality. I did not want to go to the Academy. But what I wished, what I feared, didn’t matter a crap to my father and it never had.
“Sit up straight,” he repeated. My mother made a little gesture of protest and started to say something to him. He lifted one hand and she lowered her head.
In that instant, I hated him more than I ever had.
CHAPTER 3
“My mother needs help,” Micah said. “Birthing.”
The magician leaned close to his ear. “Six pieces of silver.” Then she patted his head with one bony hand and straightened, smiling at the little crowd.
Micah stared up at her. “Five,” he whispered back.
The old woman shook her head, a tiny movement meant for no one but him. She was still smiling. Her teeth were long and yellowed. Micah could smell her. Her robes were stiff with sweat and road dust.
He felt his eyes sting and refused to cry. “Five is all we have.”
She looked down at him, tilting her head, then spoke to the crowd. “A woman in need calls me away,” she told them. “So you must buy quickly and—”
“—Micah?”
He turned.
“Micah, what’s wrong?” Mattie Han’s plump face was flushed as she made her way through the crowd. “My mother,” he began hoarsely, then his throat constricted and he couldn’t force out even one more word.
Mattie gripped his shoulders, bending to look into his face. “What is it? The babe?”
Micah nodded.
Mattie rounded on the crowd. “Clear off!” Her big hands were closed into fists. “Be off! Go!” She began to load the magician’s crates into the wagon. The bottles jangled. The old woman scowled. “Have a care with those!”
Mattie’s eyes flashed. “That boy’s mother is my friend. Hurt her and I’ll have your ears.” She slid the next crate into the wagon. “You should be ashamed. Selling bottled-up mint tea.”
The magician drew herself taller. “That tonic is made from a rare mountain moss that only grows—”
“Hush,” Mattie hissed. She jabbed a thick finger at the driver’s bench. The magician hesitated, then gripped the handhold and climbed up. Micah scrambled up on the far side, then waited, trembling, as the old magician made a show of arranging her robes and unwrapping the reins from the brake cleat.
“Mind what I said,” Mattie shouted at the magician. Then she looked at Micah. “Tell your mother I’ll come tomorrow, midmorning. I’ll cook and help with the babe.”
The magician raised her arm to snap the whip. The rack-boned cart horse leaned into the harness and the wheels creaked into motion. Micah swallowed hard as the wagon tilted, coming up onto the rutted track that led back to the cobblestones of Market Street. He dug his nails into the worn wood of the bench. He had never been alone with a magician like this. He had never been this close to one.
The old woman turned to pat his shoulder. “Five, you said? You sure of that?”
Micah nodded and shifted from beneath her hand, sliding to the outside edge of the bench. She laughed. Micah refused to look at her. He sat still as stone as the bony old horse ambled along. An hour passed, or more as Micah sat with his thoughts spinning, his mouth dry. It felt like a year.
When the wagon finally creaked to a stop in the farmyard, Micah leapt to the ground and ran toward the house, shouting for his father. The door banged open.
“Come quickly,” Papa called. “I’ll tell her you’re—”
“I’ll need the five silver,” the magician said. She had gotten down quickly and was pulling a leather bag from beneath the driver’s bench.
Micah saw his father’s face harden, but he turned back to the house. The magician glanced around, her eyes crossing Micah’s. “My horse—?”
Micah nodded. “I’ll see to it. Just hurry.”
The old woman’s face creased into a smile. “Give her some hay, will you, dearie? But don’t unharness her.”
Micah nodded and watched her smile widen when his father reappeared, holding out the pouch that held his mother’s inheritance, all of their savings, and next year’s seed money. She loosed the drawstring with her yellowed teeth, then bit down on each coin to prove the softness and purity of the silver. Only then did she walk to the porch and go up the steps. “Show me where she is.”
Micah watched them go in. He heard his mother cry out, once, and his whole body reacted. Then his father closed the door. The sound of the hinges somehow freed Micah’s feet from the ground, and he walked back to the cart horse. He led the old mare to the mossy wooden trough, wagon and all. The pump handle was warm from the sun. He knelt and drank with the mare, and the cold water steadied him a little.
When the mare lifted her head and stood slack-jawed, her muzzle dripping, Micah brought an armful of hay. He knew his father wouldn’t like it—not after the way the magician had been about the coins. But it wasn’t the mare’s fault.
Micah heard a muffled cry and stiffened. The old mare nosed at him, wetting his shirt. He tied her reins to the oak that shaded the chicken coop and tossed the hay on the ground beside her. Then there was nothing to do.
The air felt heavy; it clung to Micah’s skin as he walked toward the house, his eyes fixed on the front door. Lifting his foot to climb the porch stairs, he heard his mother scream. He stopped mid-step, off balance, then twisted around like a snared rabbit and ran across the yard, downhill, toward the barn.
His heart pounding, he shoved at the heavy door and inhaled the warm smell of livestock and hay. Gripping the smooth, worn wood of the pitchfork handle, he filled the hayricks. He worked stiffly, his whole body listening for another scream, but it did not come. He milked the goats and walked the bucket to the creek to cool the milk. When he came back up the hill, his father was in the barn, looking for him.
“It’s all quiet now. I heard the babe’s first cry.”
Micah felt like laughing, like crying. His father lifted him and swung him in a circle, then embraced him. They walked back up the hill and sat beneath the oak tree, fiddling fallen twigs in their hands, scratching lines into the dirt, listening to the old mare switch her tail at the flies.
When the door opened, Micah scrambled to his feet.
“Is she all right?” his father asked.
The magician smiled easily. “Of course. The babe is a girl.”
Micah’s father shot him a glance and they grinned at each other.
“Mind you both, let them alone,” the magician said sternly. “It was a very hard time.” Micah watched her walk, leaning outward against the weight of her bag, talking to his father over her shoulder. “You risk your wife if she doesn’t get proper rest.”
“She won’t lift anything heavier than a spoon,” Micah said and his father nodded. The magician hoisted the bag into the wagon, then untied the mare and climbed up.
“Thank you very kindly,” Micah heard his father say. “Thank you for coming.”
The magician turned. “Rest will mend her. Just leave her to sleep until tomorrow and she will be fine.”
“She won’t lift a finger for weeks,” Micah called back. “We’ll see to that.” His feet felt light, dancey, silly. The magician stung her old horse with the whip and the wagon swayed and creaked as it rolled across the farmyard, headed back toward the road.
“A girl,” Papa said. “Your mother wants Sadima for the name, after her greatgran.” He ran his hands over his face. “I like it well enough.”
Micah smiled. He liked the name, too. Sadima would be rosy and beautiful and sweet, not a bit like Brahn’s pale, weepy little sister Tarah. As they walked toward the house, Micah straightened his shoulders. He was ten years older than tiny Sadima. He would protect her.
“Micah?” His father gripped his shoulder as they went in, startling him out of his thoughts. “You’re a good boy, Micah. No father ever had a better son.”
Micah stared up at his father, astonished at the praise.
“Let’s get the eggs in,” his father said quickly, looking back out the door at the sky as though he was just now realizing that evening was near. “When she wakens, we’ll want to feed her more than yesterday’s soup.”
Micah got the basket from its hook. The hens were fussy and quarrelsome; they were used to him bothering them in the morning, not when the afternoon sun was slanting through the planks. Coming back, he opened the door to see the hearth fire crackling. His father had piled on the wood, warming the room.
“Here, then, Micah,” his father called, ladling a bowl of thick soup from the iron pot. “Good enough for you and me.”
They ate in silence, both of them glancing down the hall every few seconds.
“I’ll just go peek in,” Micah’s father said when his bowl was empty. “If she’s half awake, nursing the babe, maybe she’d like some broth.” Micah followed his father down the hallway, wondering if little Sadima would have light eyes like their mother, or brown like their father’s. “Be still now,” his father whispered, turning the door latch. Micah smiled as his father eased the door open. He thought he could hear the faint whimpering of the baby.
His father leaned in, then stepped forward. Maybe, Micah thought as he followed, they should take Sadima back into the sitting room and hold her while his mother slept. Maybe they should—
A wordless cry from his father severed Micah’s thoughts. He stared, blinking. The linens were stained with an ugly, deep red. No. Not red. Red-brown. The blood had dried. His mother lay with her eyes fixed open, one crooked arm stiff upon the blankets.
Micah stood, helpless, as his father dropped on his knees beside the bed, mouth twisted open, his cry half voice, half growl as he patted his wife’s face, gripped her hands. Micah heard him whispering, pleading with her to waken. On the floor, naked and unwrapped, lay the newborn infant, her skin blue-gray. Micah stumbled sideways, his eyes crossing his mother’s dresser, the wall, the window. Nothing looked right. His mother’s dresser was bare. The pewter candlesticks were gone. So was the little cut-glass wedding vase from the window sill. The top dresser drawer hung half open. The rest were askew, shoved closed.
The baby whimpered and Micah’s whole body jerked in response. He turned and picked her up. She was ice cold. He opened his shirt to press her against his bare chest. His father lay across his mother’s body now, shaking with sobs.
Micah carried the baby to the sitting room and stood by the fire, warming her. Then he went outside to put the sound of his father’s grief behind him. Holding his sister close, without a single human thought in his mind, he walked toward the barn. His father did not look for him until morning. It took him an hour to find his children, burrowed into the haystack, asleep, Micah’s body curved around his sister, still keeping her warm.
CHAPTER 4
As the pony pulled the carriage higher, I was sweating. I could smell my own fear, sour and sharp, seeping through the scent of rose-soap on my skin. My tunic was damp around my neck, even though it was chilly. I inhaled slowly, fighting the nausea I always felt at the first steep ascent, and the churning fear in my gut. Then, to keep from looking at either one of my parents, I watched the house shrink as we went higher—the lawns faded with distance and the slate roof dissolved into the gray mist. I squinted. It was gone. There was nothing behind me.
“Stay east of the river for as long as you can,” my father ordered the driver. Gabardino’s shoulders lifted a notch then fell to indicate he had heard. I glanced at my mother as the carriage tilted again. I was instantly sorry. Her eyes caught at mine.
“Will you be all right, Hahp?”
“Of course he will,” my father snapped.
I turned away, staring down at the river’s endless curve. The water widened and slowed as it ran past the rows of shacks and rough-stone shops. The docks were full of ships, and I could easily imagine the death-stink of the wet holds. It didn’t bother my father. It made me vomit.
South-End. The crap-end of Limori was coming awake. The cobblestones were dark and slick with fog-drip. The big-wheeled carts and the rough-coated ponies that pulled them were crowded against each other in the narrow streets. The lice-headed drivers were shouting, snapping their whips. I leaned forward and counted the blue and red pennants on the ships. Eleven. There were only eleven Malek ships in port. Most of the fleet was out, then.
“Higher, please,” my mother said softly. She hated South-End. Even distant glimpses of the packs of ragged children and skinny dogs made her sad and uneasy.
“Higher,” Father repeated for Gabardino. The driver nodded.
My mother was smiling at me. It was a false smile—most of hers are. She straightened her rings, touched her hair, smoothed her skirts, then did it again: straighten; touch; smooth. This whole time, her eyes were fastened on me. “Perhaps you will like it,” she said quietly. Her smiled warmed. “When you were little, you always followed them around when they came to the house.”
I looked down without answering. The South-End slums were receding into the fog behind us now, too, smells and all. The pony was still pulling us upward. This high, everything was scented by wind and stars. We passed over Middle Park, then Ferrin Hill, the ancient estates canopied with spreading oaks and tall sycamores brought in from the forests to the north. I wanted to live there—the days were long past when you had to be related to the king; all it took was gold, but my father couldn’t stand the sight of a neighbor’s house. He hated most people—and most people hated him.
Gabardino guided the pony into a gentle curve. My father always liked to pass over Malek Gardens, with its ponds and the hundred little waterfalls fed by streams that ran in circles, the water flowing obediently uphill, then cascading down again. Before the waterfalls, there had been year-round blue roses and blood-red lilies. As soon as other people began to have waterfalls, my father would pay for something new.
Twice a year children from South-End were brought here and allowed to play for a few hours, like puppies let out of a filthy run long enough to air. Then they were carted home again to tell stories of magic waterfalls and fish as bright as flowers and all the rest. I had gone, once, when I was six or seven. I had cried, watching the stick-thin children run in circles, half-mad with delight. Aben had not. The next year, Father left me home.
I stared down at the maze of lawns, paths, streams and woods. The families of Ferrin Hill paid to have the Pavilian or the amphitheater to themselves for weddings and memorials. My father rented the woods to the Criers Race and gazebo to the Lutist Guild. The Eridians rented the entire Park for their annual Celebration of Birth.
My father had to know that the four long nights of ritual made the people on Ferrin Hill uneasy. But he didn’t want to slight the Eridians, even though I had heard him laugh at the rumors about them many times.
“You might know a few of the boys,” my mother said, and I could tell from her voice that she was desperate to end the silence.
I glanced at her and nodded. I might. Application to the Academy was kept secret; my father had threatened me with a whipping if I told anyone, even Aben. But there had been whispers at school among those of us who were second and third sons, not heirs, and who weren’t needed at home.
I had tried so hard to fail the stinking test. I had never tried that hard at anything in my life. I heard my mother’s silk skirts rustle.
“Hahp?”
I turned to meet her eyes.
“Just do your best.” She whispered the words like a bashful child, glancing aside at my father. I nodded and looked away again.
She cleared her throat. “Some of your friends will surely be—”.
“Be still, Anna,” my father interrupted.
I saw her flush and knew she was close to crying. I wanted to tell her the usual things, that I’d be fine, that I would write letters, that I’d see her at Winterfeast. But I wouldn’t.
I loosened my collar slightly and rubbed my palms on my trousers, staring at the dark cliff that filled half the sky as we got closer. Gabardino was guiding the pony downward. I could see the entrance ledge halfway up the cliff, the enormous doors—and the ancient steps cut into the rock. They were rounded with time and moss, slanting across the stone face in a long criss-cross pattern. There was a boy about halfway up. I couldn’t imagine climbing those steps—but I knew that messengers did, every day.
I looked away from the cliff, back out over the city. The copper roof of the Eridians’ Meeting House on the other side of the river shone orange-pink in the early light. The windows on Ferrin Hill sparkled like diamonds. I imagined standing up, leaning over the side of the carriage slowly, a half inch at a time, pretending to look down at something. My balance would cross some invisible point and the weight of my body would make the decision. But I would have to be careful. If I did it too slowly, my father would stop me. If I leapt, my mother would never be able to believe it was an accident. Did I have the nerve to do it? Would I die instantly? Was the carriage still high enough for that?
I wished I could ask my father.
He would know.
He knew shit-everything.
“Hahp. Sit back,” my mother said urgently and I sat down without thinking.
So there it was.
I was a coward.
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Reviews for A Resurrection of Magic: Skin Hunger
CHICAGO TRIBUNE By Mary Harris Russel, professor emerita of English at Indiana University Northwest July 21, 2007 Skin Hunger
By Kathleen Duey
Atheneum
In our overtrilogied era, it's a delight to read a Book 1 and be so exquisitely left short of answers about its engaging characters at the end. We follow, in two apparently different time periods, a handful of people involved in the transmission of magical knowledge in a kingdom where magicians and kings struggle for dominance.
Horn Book July/August 2007
Two parallel stories alternate in this compelling new fantasy. Sadima, marked as different by her ability to speak with animals, joins the household of the coldly brilliant, ambitious Somiss, who is obsessed with returning true magic to the world. As Sadima, in love with Somiss’ servant/companion Franklin, learns the depth of Somiss’ cruelty and selfishness, she becomes enmeshed in his powerful influence, as helpless as Franklin is to leave him.
Generations later, in a society run by magic, despised second son Hahp is apprenticed to the now-wizards Somiss and Franklin. Hahp and his classmates are brutally isolated from one another in an underground training center from which only one of them will emerge; those who fail to learn the wizards’ techniques slowly starve to death. As Sadima’s and Hahp’s stories unfold, grippingly, often with episodes that resonate across the generations and alternating cliffhanger chapter endings, puzzle pieces begin to fall into place, but questions remain: how has Hahp’s society emerged from Sadima’s? And what has happened to Sadima in the interim?
The twin resolutions at book’s end are only temporary pausing points in the stories’ headlong charge, but they fully earn the measure of satisfaction they give. Duey sweeps readers up in the page-turning excitement, making this one of the more promising fantasy series beginnings of recent memory.
Booklist June 1, 2007
In the darkly atmospheric fantasy, the first in a planned trilogy called A Resurrection of Magic, Duey weaves together the stories of two teens who live in a world in which the working of magic has a turbulent history. When her bitter father dies, Sadima, a young woman who can communicate with animals, keeps house for two renegade magicians at a time when magic has been outlawed. Her experiences, which include learning to read and falling in love, alternate with those of Hahp, born generations after Sadima. Exiled by his wealthy, disapproving father, he attends a school of wizardry where, among other unpleasantness, students are starved to death if they can’t conjure up food. The pacing in this page-turner accelerates as the stories progress and links between them emerge, moving toward a cliffhanger ending that will leave readers anxious for future installments.
Kirkus June 15, 2007
This double-narrative fantasy begins slowly but deepens into a potent and affecting story of struggle. First, a small farm boy begs a magician (healer) to help his mother through childbirth, but the magician’s corrupt and leaves the baby on the floor and the mother dead. The baby is Sadima. Sadima grows up able to read animals’ minds and eventually seeks the city, where she joins two intense young men: tempestuously abusive Somiss, madly trying to recapture ancient languages of magic, and Franklin, serving Somiss with odd devotion. Somiss claims his work will restore banned magic and help the poor. In a second storyline, a boy named Hahp is sent to a magicians’ academy where he’s starved, abused, and taught meditation. Only one boy will live to graduate as a wizard, and they’re forbidden to help each other survive the filth and hunger. Some painful connections between the two narratives emerge, though key details—the fates of Sadima and Hahp—wait for the sequel. Darkly resonant.
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
Gentle Sadima becomes an uncomfortable third in the complicated partnership between idealistic Franklin (whom she comes to love) and perpetually angry Somiss, who is obsessed by his desire to bring magic back into the world. In a parallel story, young Hahp, disinherited by his rich family, and Gerrard, a slum-born orphan, are trapped in a school where no one is allowed to un-enroll and students die in their attempt to become wizards. The brutal school that Hahp and Gerrard attend is actually Somiss’ academy, the fruit of his early struggles to reinstate magic, and Somiss story with Franklin and Sadima is the prequel to the young boys’ time in school. Somiss, casually cruel, stands at the nexus of the two stories; he is a man willing to sacrifice nearly anything to achieve his goals, and at the end of the first book in the Resurrection of Magic trilogy, is it unclear how far he will go. Readers will be quickly captured as much by the mystery of the connection between the two stories as the relationships that Duey skillfully develops to tell the seemingly disparate tales. Sadima and Franklin’s slowly evolving romance is set against the troubled relationship between Franklin and Somiss, while Hahp and Gerrard struggle with their humanity in a place where they are told that to help each other means failure. The school-story setting, which mimics the ascetic feel of a religious school, is startlingly harsh, and it creates a dramatic foil for the more domestic feel of the Sadima-Somiss-Franklin triangle. There is a lot to appreciate here: intriguing characters in challenging situations, the hunt for the roots of magic, and the struggle between humanity and obsession—meaty stuff that will appeal to readers, who will devour this book and eagerly await the next in the trilogy.
Locus, 2008, Gary Wolfe
Most reviewers get reminded on a fairly regular basis of books that we've overlooked, so when Kathleen Duey's YA novel Skin Hunger was brought to the attention of our esteemed reviews editor — after having been a finalist for last year's National Book Award in Young People's Literature — I got a copy, and it didn't take long to see why we might have overlooked it. Despite an impressively brooding David Ho cover, it bears a title that could easily be taken for a generic zombie or vampire tale (though it turns out to mean something quite different), an author who despite some success in the YA field has remained largely invisible to the genre community, and a warning that it's the first volume in yet another trilogy, bearing the overall title "A Resurrection of Magic" (by now, you could pretty much start a monthly book club of tales involving the return of magic to the world). But it turns out that Skin Hunger is one of the more accomplished and original fantasy novels of the year, and the trilogy it inaugurates might well constitute a major work (the narrative here is too truncated to claim that quite yet). There are a lot of strategies available to authors launching trilogies — they can write a more or less independent novel to be followed by sequels; they can complete a limited story arc within the context of a larger unfinished arc; they can write a movie-serial cliffhanger; they can simply stop the narrative at an appropriate breakpoint, with the understanding that the major issues are left unresolved. Duey chooses a combination of the latter two strategies, and it's inevitably a risky choice — some readers will feel that the tale just stops in midstream, or that it's only a fragment — but when the strategy works well, as it does here, it can be ferociously compelling: Duey may or may not know exactly where she's going, but this is clearly a story that wants to be told, and, so far at least, it's a supremely honest and perceptive fantasy.
And it's also a fairly dark one. The story alternates between the third-person narrative of Sadima, a young girl growing up in a world in which magic has been reduced to the depredations of charlatans but who finds in herself a talent for communicating with animals; and the first-person tale of Hahp, a wealthy merchant's disdained second son sent to study wizardry at a draconian monastic academy where students who fail to learn magic are simply allowed to starve to death — a kind of Hogwarts as Gulag. It takes a while to realize that these narratives are set several generations apart — Hahp's tale seems to take place a couple of hundred years after Sadima's — and that they're connected. Sadima, whose mother died at the hands of a fake magician while giving birth to her, lives in a poor rural family which despises anything to do with magic, and her relationship with her father is strained by the circumstances of her birth. She meets a kindly young man named Franklin, servant of the brilliant young aristocrat Somiss, who has heard of her magical skills, and after her father dies she sets out to join them in the seaside city of Limòri, becoming a kind of cook, scribe, and all-around manager for the humane Franklin and the volatile, reclusive Somiss, who is determined to rediscover the ancient secrets of true magic and establish a kind of academy, despite the opposition of the royals and of his own family. Meanwhile in the future, Hahp, whose wealthy family lives in the same city of Limòri and who also has issues with his dad, learns that being sent to study at the wizards' academy is very nearly a sentence of death — supposedly only one of the students will actually graduate. Still, all the students come from wealth except Hahp's roommate Gerrard, who he initially calls "Fishboy" because of his lowly origins, and whose presence there is unexplained. There is absolutely no redeeming warmth in Hahp's brutal tale — the students readily turn on one another (and are warned against helping each other), the instructors are unyielding, students actually die as warned, and even the hope of survival is tinged by bitterness and plans for revenge.
So when we learn that Hahp's major instructors are Franklin and Somiss, a host of intriguing questions arise: how have they survived the centuries? What became of Sadima? How did the promise of returning magic morph into this nightmare of brutality, and how does it actually function in this new world? Duey's view of magic is incisive and morally complex, and her skill at developing the central characters of Sadima, Franklin, and Somiss is equaled by her convincing sense of place — what we see of the city of Limòri, whose history seems somehow bound up in the narrative of the unwritten centuries, almost echoes the rich and grotesque New Weird settings of Miéville or Harrison (but more about that in a minute). Duey is clearly tapping into something powerful here, and if the remainder of the Resurrection of Magic plays out at this level of intensity, it will easily take its place among those YA trilogies that ought to earn the attention of fantasy readers of any age.
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