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Monday, November 24, 2008

Skinned by Robin Wasserman

Title: Skinned

Author: Robin Wasserman

Summary:

Lia Kahn was perfect: rich, beautiful, popular -- until the accident that nearly killed her. Now she has been downloaded into a new body that only looks human. Lia will never feel pain again, she will never age, and she can't ever truly die. But she is also rejected by her friends, betrayed by her boyfriend, and alienated from her old life. Forced to the fringes of society, Lia joins others like her. But they are looked at as freaks. They are hated...and feared. They are everything but human, and according to most people, this is the ultimate crime -- for which they must pay the ultimate price.

Rating: 4/5

Review:

The cover of this book is absolutely beautiful. The girl is gorgeous, the mechanical line things (I wonder what they're called?) gave it flash without being too overpowering. Also on the cover is a review/quote by one of my favorite authors: "A spellbinding story about loss, rebirth, and finding out who we really are inside." Scott Westerfeld said that about this novel, and I whole-heartedly agree.

This was a book that confused me... at first. I was confused, but strangely intrigued. The book starts out with this girl... and she is lifeless. She can't move, she can't talk, but she can feel everything. She was in an accident, and it changed her life forever.

I couldn't stop reading; I was entranced. The story was just so interesting, and it brought up so many questions that have yet to be answered. When I started reading I wasn't expecting much; the cover was gorgeous, but that doesn't always mean anything. And yet when I finished, I was glad that I read the book. It was a great novel. Similar to Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, which is set in a futuristic world as well, and also similar to one of my Favorite Novels of All-Time, Stephenie Meyer's The Host, simply because it questions the ideas of humanity: what makes a human, and what crosses the line from human to something different? In The Host, it was a soul. In Skinned, it was a machine. Still, the idea was the same. And while all these books are similar, Skinned was probably the one that I would pick out to say it was the most "out there". Good? Heck yes. Worth the time? Definitely. But not for someone who doesn't want to stretch the imagination a bit.

I am still eagerly anticipating a sequel.

1 comments:

Anna said...

I'm reading this right now. I'm finding it a little bit hard to get into it, though.

hope.

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