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Book One: Skin Hunger Reading Level: Young Adult This is an unusual book—dark, haunting, and original. Duey's characters are fascinating and her writing is so good that you don't want to stop reading even though the clock is telling you it's much too late. Finding really inventive fantasy novels is always a supreme treat, especially if you're overdosed on wands, wizards, or flying pterodactyls, and Skin Hunger is indeed a resurrection of magic and magical writing. In this world, magic has been relegated to the underground, to traveling gypsy-like healers who help with sickness, births, deaths, and an occasional wish, if it's very secretive and well-paid for. Sadima is a young peasant girl, born at the hands of just such a one, but one not very skilled, and so her mother dies in childbirth. Sadima grows up with her devastated father and protective older brother, hiding her unusual gift for communicating with animals, but knowing there is more in the world than the farm and the restrictions she must live with. When she has a chance meeting with a young man who understands and welcomes her gift, she knows she has to leave for the great city, to study and become who she really is, even if it means abandoning her roots forever. Hahp, the second son of a rich lord, neither an important nor advantageous position to be in, is sent to study at the academy of magic, with the world's greatest wizards. It's a bleak and fearsome place, high atop a craggy mountain. He discovers he is one of only ten boys to be admitted, and quickly finds that only one of them will graduate from this class—the first rule being that of survival. From the very first day, Hahp greatly doubts that he will be the one who will live. Sadima and Hahp's stories are told in alternating chapters, perhaps hundreds of years apart. As the characters begin to intersect, the narrative becomes even more fascinating, as does Kathleen Duey's skills at telling us their stories. Skin Hunger is just plain great storytelling, and the next two books in this wonderful trilogy will be eagerly awaited.— Kay Morris
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