Skin Hunger: A Resurrection of Magic (review)

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 this first book in the Resurrection of Magic trilogy, it is 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 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-Franklin-Somiss 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.