Review – A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Length: 340 pages
Publisher: Amulet Books
Release Date: October 17, 2017
ASIN : B074QHGLDP
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Bought for Kindle
Rating: 3/5 stars
“Makepeace is an illegitimate daughter of the aristocratic Fellmotte family, and as such, she shares their unique hereditary gift: the capacity to be possessed by ghosts. Reluctant to accept her appointed destiny as vessel for a coterie of her ancestors, she escapes. As she flees the pursuing Fellmottes across war-torn England, she accumulates a motley crew of her own allies, including outcasts, misfits, criminals, and one extremely angry dead bear.”
Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book that I bought for my Kindle.
Story (3/5): This ended up being a bit of a disappointment to me after reading “A Face Like Glass” and “Deeplight”. There are some neat ideas here and it is beautifully written but the story is really slow and I struggled to stay engaged in it. The story follows Makepeace who ends up at the estate of the Fellmotte family after the death of her mother. There she finds she is one of the few people who can be possessed by ghosts. The Fellmotte family are keeping Makepeace as a spare to hold the ghosts of the family. She ends up foiling all their plans as she flees across an England at war. The story ends up being sort of a cat and mouse chase and was devoid of a lot of the ingenuity I’ve seen in Hardinge’s other books.
Characters (3/5): While I admire Makepeaces’s determination and wits I never engaged with her all that well as a character. You don’t really get to know any other characters all that well aside from the ghosts that Makepeace shares her head with. Makepeace was okay but I never fell in love with her. This is one of those books where all of the characters are somewhat selfish and unlikable.
Setting (3/5): The other two Hardinge books I read were set in such amazing worlds that this setting was a bit of a let down. Yes, I guess it was decently done and the war torn English countryside was described well enough…but wasn’t really the point of the story. I am just so used to amazing world-building from Hardinge and there wasn’t really any world-building here. It was okay.
Writing Style (3/5): While parts of the book are beautifully written and lyricall and I did enjoy some of the psychological discussions, mostly this book is just slow. Makepeace chases and is chased by various Fellmotte’s all around England, it gets repetitive and boring. I almost stopped reading this a couple of times and in the end I don’t think finishing it really bought me much. The idea of transferring souls of the dead into people who can host ghosts is fascinating and makes for some interesting scenarios, but the overall plot was just too slow.
My Summary (3/5): Overall this was a disappointment for me. I was really looking forward to reading another Hardinge book, but maybe I just picked the wrong one here. I struggled with this some; it was boring and I didn’t like the characters. After being so impressed with “A Face Like Glass” and “Deeplight” I was just soooo sad I didn’t like this book more. I have both “The Cuckoo’s Song” and “The Lie Tree” to read as well, hopefully I will enjoy those books more.
