When I first picked up this book I thought it sounded intriguing yet I was not overly excited. In fact, I put it down but a few days later came back to it when looking for my next book to read. So glad I picked up this book. I read it in one day. This time I actually have to agree that the reference to Khaleesi is a good reference. Albion is a dynamic woman. The special abilities that she possess is cool. Although at this point I have not felt any strong feelings towards the two male interests. Hopefully this will change in the sequel. Also I just have to say that I will be watching the fish next time I go swimming in a lake. Anyone who likes paranormal, historical fiction, strong female heroines, or just looking for a new author to read you have to pick up a copy of this book as you will get lost in the story. Which for me turned into a quick read. ( )

Nicely written and engaging, but it reminded me how much I struggle with mystical/fantasy elements of books. ( )

...Skin is not quite what I am looking for in a historical novel.For me. it was a decent read but I do feel Tampke sacrifices a bit too much historical accuracy to the needs of her story. I sometimes wondered if, with the fusion culture Tampke uses, it wouldn't have worked better in a completely fictional setting. The story leans on the supernatural for a large extent. The step into fantasy seems a minor one. Still, if that sort of thing doesn't bother you Skin can be a very entertaining read. All things considered, it is a début with room for improvement.

Full Random Comments review ( )

Ailia is a foundling, discovered on the step of the tribequeen of Durotriga’s kitchen house, where she is raised by Cookmother, knowing nothing of her family or of her skin (her family's totem). In a society where skin means everything, Ailia is viewed as an outsider, and only the tribequeen’s favour prevents her from being seen as an outcaste. Growing up in the west of Albion, the village of her tribe, Caer Cad, is relatively sheltered from the growing influence of Rome, though not ignorant of it. After the death of Cunobelinus in the east, the threat of a Roman invasion becomes ever more real, and Ailia and her tribe are aware that their ways of life, in particular the knowledge kept by their journeypeople, cannot be preserved under Roman occupation.

The story is told in Ailia's voice, and I think this in my opinion is a major drawback: though we live through her hopes and fears, and her anguish of not having skin, it is clear from the outset that she is destined for greater things and not to remain a humble kitchen girl for ever, and as such I found it difficult to identify with her, as she's just too apart from the other characters in the book; I feel that the story would have been better served with an omniscient narrator relating events in the third person.

I also thought that too much of Ailia's story was simply dictated by fate, and influenced not enough by her own actions. The romance angle was overplayed, and I'm sorry to say that Ailia often came across as a lovesick teenager, which became a little grating after a while, though this might appeal to a young adult readership. While this novel sits firmly in the genre of historical fiction, there is also a not insubstantial fantasy element to it, which I feel gives an interesting perspective on the way Celtic Britain's society could have operated, but which I can't say is entirely successful in my eyes. The front cover proclaims that this book describes 'a collision of two worlds', which I thought referred to the world of Iron Age Britain and that of the Roman Empire; strangely enough the Romans don't play a large part in the story, though their growing influence and the threat of invasion, and later the relentless westward march of their army, is tangible in the background, and poignancy is added as we all know the eventual outcome. To me the statement also alludes to the collision of worlds between the hardworld, i.e. the physical world, and the realm of the Mothers, i.e. the world of the creators in Celtic society (which constitutes the fantasy element).

While Ilka Tampke certainly knows how to recreate a lost way of life in front of the readers' eyes, to me it was the final forty or so pages that are the most powerful in the book, where I was actually genuinely affected, and I wished that this high quality had been present during the preceding 250+ pages, while the ending is left curiously open. If this is the first book in a sequence, then I really want to find out if Ailia will be able to resolve the dilemma she was faced with at the end of the novel, and if it isn't, then I will always wonder what will have been the point of her becoming what she did when we all know what happened in the historical record.

(This review was written for Amazon's Vine programme.) ( )

I reviewed this for Interzone. I picked the book as one of my choices based on the one-line description in the email sent out to reviewers. It turned out to completely different to what I had expected. It’s a Celtic historical fantasy that sort of hovers on the border of YA and adult fantasy. Bits of it worked really well, but the narrator was such a special snowflake it sort of spoiled things for me. ( )