Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey

Title: Sacred Scars
Author: Kathleen Duey
Genre: Fantasy
Year of Publication: 2009

Sacred Scars is the sequel to Kathleen Duey's Skin Hunger. The story picks up where we left off with the boy Hahp and the girl Sadima. Sadima, Franklin, and Somiss have been driven out of Limori by a fire and have taken residence in a cave. Somiss continues to attempt to restore magic while Sadima dreams of escape for her, Franklin, and the boys that Somiss keeps locked up. Generations later, Hahp is still trying to keep himself alive through the rigorous courses offered at the Limori Academy of Magic. The tasks are getting harder and harder and it's all Hahp can do to keep his sanity. He teams up with his mysterious roommate Gerrard in order to put a stop to all the evil the magicians are inflicting upon them. But are they powerful enough?


Reading this book reminded me just how annoying this series was. First off, the writing style is simple. Most of the writing favors the use of one type of sentence structure, often favoring it when other structures would have been better. This leads to a rather choppy reading, particularly for Sadima's story. Hahp's story is somewhat better, which keeps causing me to think that the novel was written by two different authors as the writing styles for the two stories are rather different.

Secondly, I really hate how novel alternates between Sadima's and Hahp's story via chapters. This leads to an extremely disconnected experience while reading. The two stories do not intertwine with one another except for a few of the same characters. It's much better to read all of one character's story and then going back to read the other's afterward.

Thirdly, each chapter follows a similar plot line. Readers most often times finds the main character waking up to the darkness. This makes the novel extremely predictable. For example, for Hahp's story, Hahp always wakes up to the pounding on his bedroom door. He cleans himself up, follows a wizard down the halls to his classes, meets up with the other students, does his lessons, then goes back to his room brooding how to escape the nightmarish place he is in.

Fourth, there is hardly any actual characterization in the novel. All of the characters are flat; hardly are they dynamic. Somiss will always be a cruel and violent wizard. Luke will always be a bully. The author seems to choose only one character trait for each character and lets it stick with them for the rest of their lives, allowing for no growth whatsoever.

Overall, the book is predictable and just drags on. There are a lot of filler chapters that the author uses in an attempt to lengthen the novel. Out of the seventy or so chapters there are, at least half of them can be removed, lengthened somewhat for more details, and there will still be a story. Most of the characters I also find to be annoying. However, you can't not give the author for trying. The story idea itself has potential. If only she can develop it more into a much more dynamic novel.