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.

Book Summary

“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.