Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey

I adored Skin Hunger when it came out, despite it’s precipitous ending.  Remember those debates?!

Now the second in the series has been released to help people recover from that ending.  And it picks up right where the last book left off, in the midst of the drama and tension.  The book has two interconnected story lines which are set 200 years apart.  Readers get to see the rediscovery of magic in one of the lines and the harsh reality of it in the other.  In both stories is Somiss, the aristocrat who struggles to find the key to magic and after finding it, runs a diabolical school to train young magicians.  Franklin, his servant, also appears in both story lines, as servant, unwilling helper, and magician.  At the heart of the stories is Sadima, who learns magic by reading Somiss’ documents and eavesdropping on his recitations.  She yearns to escape with Franklin, her love, and the street urchins they have kidnapped and caged.  But in this brutal world of magic, there are only desperate choices, evil around ever corner, and constant deception.

Nicely the novel manages to not rehash the first book at all, yet readers who have had a gap of a few years between the novels will find it offers just enough to allow you to remember the first novel.  Duey’s writing is gripping, tense, and engulfing.  She has created a world that is so dark, yet it has piercing moments of light, love and truth.  Duey excels at creating characters with depth and dimension, then immersing them into a twisted story.  It makes for a book that is not only impossible to put down but makes it difficult to breathe deeply while reading.

This novel is filled with violence.  Violence so shattering that it is hard to read, harder to process, and impossible to understand.  She is an author who pushes it to a new limit, daring the reader to read on, dancing on the knife’s edge.  All to great and dazzling effect.  She is an author I don’t trust to keep my favored characters alive.  In fact, I am constantly checking to see which of the stories is written in first person, hoping that guarantees survival.

Though I have used some of the most powerful words I have to describe this novel, it is far more dark, disturbing and taut than I can express.  Teens will love this world, react to its harshness, and eagerly await the third and final book in the series.  Appropriate for ages 13-17.

Reviewed from copy received from publisher.