No Spoilers!! Yay! (except my use of the eyedropper...?)SACRED SCARS: Hornbook review 10/09
After the momentary pause at the (cliffhanger) end of SKIN HUNGER, the action resumes full throttle. In alternating chapters, magically attuned servant-girl Sadima plots a rebellion against her exploitive master Somiss, who is keeping her and Franklin captive in a cave complex while he relearns how to use the old magic; and two hundred years later, in the sadistic school for wizards run from the same cave complex, apprentice wizard Hahp plots a rebellion against Somiss and Franklin in a world where magic is now widespread. The plot-gunning question of what has happened to Sadima in the meantime is only partially answered: Duey doles clues with an eyedropper, keeping readers busily but happily engaged in connecting dots even as the horrors and triumphs of the unfolding story hold them spellbound. When the last page of this exquisitely suspenseful fantasy is turned, readers will be satisfied (Both plotlines come to crisis and thence to resolution, however temporary) but will feel they are still living in Duey’s world, waiting to discover what happens to the characters they have become so invested in—waiting impatiently for Duey to conjure the concluding volume.
