Unseen by humanity, They wander our earth. They,
the Nafikh, wild, near-immortal aliens with a passion for
winter and the delights of the flesh. Too many humans die
when the Nafikh try to touch them. To combat this
problem, They created servs. Artificial humans with a
glowing power Source in their chest, servs live their
lives in hellish pain and servitude. Lucy is a serv sent
down early, raised by humans and not registered until her
teens. She does what she must to get by and fill her
Service quota, and one day, she hopes to buy herself back
out of Service and live a normal life. All her plans come
to a grinding halt when the body of a young serv is found
and linked back to Lucy.
SKINNER LUCE is a really creative and interesting
read. I think the ideas of the Nafikh and all the
repercussions and rules of Service are really excellent.
It's fun to plunge into a world like this, to see it
through the eyes of a character who is actually living
the life. After a brief period of confusion and a retread
of some earlier chapters, I felt like I understood it
all. There were some surprises, but none of them came from
lack of understanding. It was a most fantastic episode in
the life of our main character. The flashbacks held vital
information in a manner which was seamless. The narrative
voice stuck faithfully to Lucy, not once giving the
reader pause.
Beyond Lucy and her immediate family, the
characters tended to blend into one another. I couldn't
tell the differences in any of the Nafikh; maybe that was
a deliberate choice. As for the other servs, I could only
tell who was in charge of something and who was not. The
only unique serv was Julian, Lucy's ex-boyfriend. He had
enough of a personality to draw something out of, enough
character to be interesting. The actions of the other
characters are about as blurred as they are. I was never
quite sure who was bad, who was good, who was neutral,
who was mistaken or lost. I just saw servs as one, in
spite of the clearly intended dramatic personality
differences. I could see the differences but didn't know
to whom they belonged.
Character issues aside, SKINNER LUCE is
definitely a great novel for everyone either older or
vastly more mature than the average high school student.
Some of the themes are very mature, especially in the
second half of the book. I wouldn't recommend this to
anyone who doesn't love science fiction; it's pretty well
soaked in it. Every moment is a tribute or a twist on an
existing trope. Read it once for fun, twice for action,
three times for Lucy. If you're looking for an
interesting novel, which will make you feel harder than
you've felt in a long time, check SKINNER LUCE out.
“Skinner was what servs called each other. It was
because
they were fake, their skins a disguise…”
Every
year when the deep cold of winter sets in, unbeknownst to
humanity, dangerous visitors arrive from another world.
Disguised as humans, the Nafikh move among us in secret,
hungry for tastes of this existence. Their fickle,
often-violent needs must be accommodated at all times, and
the price of keeping them satisfied is paid most heavily by
servs.
Created by the Nafikh to attend their every
whim, servs are physically indistinguishable from humans
but
for the Source, the painful, white-hot energy that both
animates and enslaves them. Destined to live in pain,
unable
to escape their bondage, servs dwell in a bleak underworld
where life is brutal and short.
Lucy is a serv who
arrived as a baby and by chance was adopted by humans.
She’s
an outcast among outcasts, struggling to find a place where
she truly belongs. For years she has been walking a
tightrope, balancing between the horrors of her serv
existence and the ordinary life she desperately longs to
maintain; her human family unaware of her darkest
secrets.
But when the body of a serv child turns up
and Lucy is implicated in the gruesome death, the worlds
she’s tried so hard to keep separate collide. Hounded by
the
police, turned upon by the servs who once held her dear,
she
must protect her family and the life she’s made for
herself.
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