Customer Reviews

Turnskin

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was expecting something gothy, (werewolves or vampires),but what I got was a really well written urban fantasy. The story follows Tom as he leaves behind his small town roots--as well as a murder and a dangerous, sexy boyfriend-- to try and make it in the big city. Of course, neither the murder nor the boyfriend stay behind him for long.

The setting is exotic and realistic, the fantasy elements blending easily with the mundane -- rickshaw drivers compete with cars for the roads, tourists gawk at shape-shifting prostitutes and gossip about which film stars are Shifters. It feels like a real place, and the characters that inhabit it are subtle, diverse and fun. (I loved Tom's cousins and their run down theater with velvet seats and falling plaster).

Of course Cloud, the sexy, dangerous boyfriend steals the show, still it was Tom, with his blend of vulnerability and determination, who made me feel for him so much that by the end I was quietly cheering as he faced down crooked cops and theater critics alike. Go Tom!

I have a wonderful time reading this. The setting is magical and enchanting, the writer's descriptions vivid. If this her debut, I am in awe of her talents.
The writer has created a fascinating world occupied by Shifters (shapeshifters who are not animals but they do have different coloured fur or hair and some with muzzles) and Skins (humans since they are practically hairless by comparison). The Skins are the higher order specie, most treating the Shifters with comtempt. But that does not prevent the Skins from hiring the Shifters as impersonators, a very original concept in the story indeed.

Both main and side characters are lively, refreshing and well flushed out, each one distinct and fun. Tom is a very likable hero, as this small town half breed (born of a shifter mother and a human father) conquers obstacles and fights for his dream and lover in the big city. You just want this vulnerable, decent but brave character to succeed. Cloud Coldmoon, a Shifter from a "Mafia" Shifter family, is the dangerous but sexy boyfriend, providing twists and turns throughout the story.

Then there are all those charming side characters. Tom's three delightful cousins who take the naive Tom under their wings, Tom's protective female friend, Angela, in the early chapters, Cloud's tough brother, Seven, and the Skins from the threatre world, just to name a few.

The plot is very original, well paced, with exciting and romantic moments as we follow young Tom's adventures. The writer's prose is most engrossing and charming. And you just have to be captivated by all the impersonations and shiftings.

This is the second release from the same publisher of "Wicked Gentlemen". Turnskin is unique and a real charmer. Excellent!

Wonderful! The main characters are well developed and engaging, the dialogue is entertaining. There is a little bit of everything in here: racism, ghettoization, classism, elitism, lookism all portrayed in a seemingly alternative universe but the issues are all present day, real world. A great read, I didn't want to get to the end.

There are other reviews for this work, so I will avoid telling you about the characters, their problems, and the story. Instead, I will tell you that the shifter theme is used here to good effect to explore problems of prejudice. In a world where a shifter can look like, or impersonate, anything he or she wants to be -- any sex, any gender, any class, any profession -- it makes no sense to judge anyone by other than the content of their character. Kimberling puts her characters in situations where others make speciesist remarks after mistaking them for one of their own and where famous people reveal that they weren't always what they now appear to be. This aspect of the book makes it part of a moral conversation that is still unfortunately necessary in this country.

I have enjoyed every book I've purchased from Blind Eye Books, and Turnskin was no exception. I read it straight through. The main character is a shapeshifter. Not a wereanimal, but an actual shape changer. This was not only a very creative spin on a common paranormal trope, but it also tied into the plot. These shifters can change their appearance, and also impersonate people (which is illegal). Very clever indeed.

The writing is tight, especially for the world building. Kimberling masterfully uses small details to create a familiar, but also very different world. Tom can't go to the city without transportation papers. He's denied the papers because he has no "urban skills." These two facts speak volumes about this world without using a lot of words, and subsequently made for a fast-paced story. There is just enough description to bring everything to life without an awkward info dump. However, the characterization is not as strong as the world-building. Tom is a bit cliché (naïve country boy lost in the big city), and Cloud is never fully developed beyond the master-class impersonator/gangster. This was an issue since their romance underlies the entire story: the sex scenes are the fade-to-black variety, and Tom didn't spend enough time with Cloud otherwise to build the true love they are supposed to have. That is not to say I didn't like them. I did. They just needed a little more fleshing out to make them real. The supporting cast was livelier. Tom's cousins are interesting, and provide a good balance to the romance.

Overall, though I don't think this novel has the depth of Astrid Amara's The Archer's Heart, it was well-written and engaging. I would be very happy to return to this world for a sequel, or just another story. Highly recommended.

Honesty from the outset~

I first read Nicole Kimberling's work in the Hell Cop anthology, really enjoyed her writing style, wanted to try more, and her Turnskin landed in my greedy little hands.

First things first~

Let me say right from the outset that this is NOT an ordinary were-whatever story. I realise some readers may see the word 'shifter' and associate it with changing into an animal form when there's a full moon blah, blah. However in this book, the author has returned to the more traditional concept of the shapeshifter as an individual who has the ability to literally change their shape; the length of their legs and arms, sex, hair and eye colour, voice, and even skin - and, yes, to fur too! This may sound a little gooey, but I can assure you the changes/shifts are handled very subtly by the author and, in my opinion, this is actually an important part of the story. That is, those things that make us the same and also make us different.

Turnskin is a well crafted world featuring Tom Fletcher - a naive young Shifter who writes and puts on one-man plays for his fellow farmhands, all the while dreaming of making it big in the city and seeing his name up in lights. He falls for Cloud Coldmoon, a not-so-nice-guy who embroils Tom in a murder from which he is forced to flee to the big, bad city and the two are separated.

You may be thinking 'oh, it's the star-crossed thing again' *yawn*. But the twists and turns of the plot set against the backdrop of the Turnskin Collective theatre, Tom's efforts to make his dream come true, and a group of interesting secondary characters makes this story rather unique. Like me, by the end of the book you'll be hoping Tom and Cloud find a way to be together.

I really love the author's humour and wit and these are evident throughout the story. There is a hilarious scene where Tom moves into the same room as his cousin Righteous that had me nearly crying with laughter (so much so that the boy kittens came running to see what the fuss was about *g*).

The differences between Skins and Shifters is a recurring theme in Turnskin with prejudice dealt with in both a serious and an amusing manner. I particularly enjoyed those places where shapeshifting was used to explore gender and transgender issues. I thought this was very cleverly done.

A couple of issues/warnings~

The characters do change 'skins' a number of times, especially in the lead-up to the climax of the story, so it may get a little confusing. I admit there were times when I thought to myself 'is he being himself or impersonating that other one now?' But it was always pretty easy to work out.

Tom intrigued me. He was at times naive, smart, confident, cowardly, insightful, clueless, self-absorbed, caring, trusting and cautious. All in all a very complex character who I would have liked to know even more about - like what made him really tick. I know; not half demanding curious, aren't I!

My recommendation~

Turnskin is for those looking for an enjoyable read and are interested in a unique shifter love story with a great cast of characters.

There had been no fanfare, no buzz, no slew of recs to prepare me for this novel [1]. It's not on the Amazon rankings anywhere, not on any "best evah" lists, nor were there squeeing fans or addicts chanting for more. So when this radiantly intelligent novel ensnared me in its utterly compelling and thought-provoking universe, it was more than just a wonderful surprise, it was quite the pan galactic gargle blaster [2] to my deplorably dulled, m/m-reading head.

Turnskin is fast-paced, smooth and easy. Although the writing never quite rises to the lyrical or moving, Ms Kimberling is quiet, crisp and competent in her prose, never intruding, always moving the story along. And it's the visual movie that rolls in your head with her words, the pictures that she paints and the ensuing questions and thoughts that flow in your mind which enchant.

Tom Fletcher is a half-shifter, half-skin (although passing as a full shifter) who has spent all his young life in a small town in the middle of nowhere. When an affair with a local cop ends suddenly, tragically, he flees to the big city to make his future as a playwright.

Being inside Turnskin is like being inside a Van Gogh painting -- oh sure, those are sunflowers and country fields, the shapes and outlines seem familiar. Yes, it's true Van Gogh painted sunflowers and countrysides. But that's so insufficiently true, so inadequately true, that it does a disservice to the artist as well as the viewers. They're so vividly and differently fashioned, re-fashioned, rather, that you see everything in a new and exciting light. Right from its first setting, a trailer in an onion field, Turnskin felt as though I was inside a brilliant yellow-orange Van Gogh landscape, everything familiar yet new, strange and shiny.

Quick, close your eyes for two seconds. Picture a playwright. Yes? Whom did you see? Go ahead. Admit it, most of you saw a lean, Ralph Fiennes in "Shakespeare in Love" type, right? Intense, dark and Caucasian? Or a balding 18th Century type with a goatee (the iconic William Shakespeare portrait)? Those of you claiming you saw a black playwright, you can put your hands down, and stop lying. You know you didn't. It's this reader's opinion that some readers will still have pictured a somewhat caucasian Tom throughout their reading of the book, despite the author's opening page descriptions. Remarkable just how in control of our mental movies our internal myth-making machinery is.

For this reader, an immigrant and a racially visible minority, the various elements of the storylines don't simply serve to superficially tease, they stomp all over deeply rooted raw nerves. Integral to the plot is the powerful ability shifters (the subjugated of the two species) possess to alter their appearance -- a chameleon-like reshaping to a fine degree of color, size, shape and detail. When you're aware every second that you're out in public in this society of your skin color, you are only too familiar with painful questions of identity and the pull of escape from one's physically defining confines.

What would I choose to look like, if I could look like anything at all? What do identity and standards of beauty mean, if we could all look the same? What if I could take a turn in someone else's skin? More importantly, what if others could take a turn in mine? These have been central questions in my life, having grown up in a society used to race riots, discrimination, violence, intimidation, the powerlessness of the individual, with myriad communities and ethnic, communal and religious hostility (and their tolerance). And of course, now living as a minority adult in America. Fitting in and seeking acceptance has been a lifelong, if futile, obsession.

If I were white, would I feel the same visceral tension at the image of a cop car slowly coming up behind me in the dead of night? Would my heart be racing in anxiety? If I were white, would I relate this easily to the shifter's story, would the images of the shifter ghetto behind barbed wire fences bring tears to my eyes as they did for me, and wring my heart? What would the people who are living behind present day barbed wire fences have to say? Forty hours after reading Turnskin, this reader happened to read Elie Wiesel's Night. The images of a people shoved behind a barbed wire fence even in their own town, Nazi soldiers putting yellow stars on Jewish foreheads to mark them, weren't burnt on my retina at the time of reading Turnskin. They didn't need to be, however.

Turnskin, thankfully, stays true to its mm romance genre (however tenuously). In the moving and oddly humorous twists of this tale, the societal underpinnings are alluded to, interacted with, but served with a light hand. An entertaining cast of characters adds to the overall charm and likeability of it all, their sincerity and zeal to the cause of the theater and each other endearing. Lessons (and questions) abound in the purpose of clan and kith, gender and race. In the end, Tom finds love and acceptance and it's nobody's business but his what shape he's in (quite literally) to accomplish it.

It would be true to say that Turnskin is a charming, simple, romantic love story. It would, however, be so very insufficiently and inadequately true. This book has courage and intelligence, it is virtuoso world building and story telling on themes which don't normally get addressed in this genre. An extraordinarily worthwhile reading experience.


[1] Don't bother pointing out that Lambda win, you know that means diddly squat to us ignorant Amazon savages...

[2] "rather like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick"

I really can't say enough about this book. What a fantastic and intelligent novel. Of course, the story is wonderful but the underlying essence of what the author is trying to show us about our own world (even if the one she is describing is a very alternative universe) is difficult to describe. It's just amazing.
Read it if you care about how our culture sees and treats the "different", the ones it cannot fit in a small box and just classify. Buy it if you understand that is never that simple and that we can't just close our eyes and pretend the bad and ugly we don't want to see doesn't exist; that we are all different and all valuable.

You'll love it.

Set in an alternate universe that has some similarities to our contemporary world, young Tom Fletcher is a Shifter, someone who can change their form entirely, who lives among ordinary humans in a distant farming community. He is a creative sort, an aspiring playwright, who puts on small productions where he can change his body about and play various parts. He longs to head to the city of Riverside where he believes he has some relatives who own a theater company, and where others of his kind exist.

Events quickly occur forcing him to flee away to the city after he is suspected of murdering a local patrolman whom Tom was secretly having an affair with. In fear of authorities who look at Shifters with suspicion due to their ability to change their looks and impersonate normal humans, Tom has a harrowing trip to the city, to which access is highly restricted. He manages to get in and find the theater and despite risks that may uncover his past, he pursues his dream of acting and writing for the stage. And he finds a wealthy patron, interested in both his talent and his body. And Tom searches for the mysterious Cloud Coldmoon, scion of one of the criminal families of Riverside, whom he thinks he may love.

The curious life of Shifters in this society, their restrictions and their abilities, makes for some interesting customs. Tom's pursuit of his career is as full of adventure and suspense as his love life and his problems with the legal authorities. The structure here is not like your standard romance, focusing on the development of the relationship between two lovers, but more like an urban fantasy story about shape-shifters and society in an alternate world. There is, however, enough of a focus on Tom's love-life to keep those interested in romance and sex scenes fairly happy. There are definitely darker aspects, too, what with the murder and the bigoted police and dangerous shifter crimelords who don't hesitate to kill or mame to enforce their control. The book is unconventional in other ways, too, with Tom usually going about covered in black fur, which seems a bit extreme when he can look totally human if he wished. The Shifters here are not your typical werewolf types. The changing of various parts of the body at will can be disconcerting and a bit bizarre, but it does make for a more unique reading experience.

Tom is living in a small agricultural town, where he's the only Shifter for miles around, with big dreams of becoming an actor & dramatic writer. So when Cloud, the man he's in love with, suddenly disappear and left him in a truckload of trouble, Tom jumps on the occasion and travel to the city, to both make it big in the theatre world and to reunite with his lover... who turns out to be a dangerous individual to hang around with.

What makes the strength of this book is the world it is set in; it's well-thought and there's no big, white-elephant-of-a-blunder that makes you go `Huh?' and/or roll your eyes. The way the Shifters are described is also very evocative (all that soft furry skin... made my fingers tingle!) and the secondary characters were fleshed-out and they kept up the story -- Seven, Cloud's hunky older brother, particularly stood out... for me at least!

The couple is also one of my favourite type: Tom is a candid country bumpkin coming to the city, not really naïve so much as very honest. His freshness is a good counterpart's to Cloud's defeatist take on life. As for Cloud, he's the weakest part of the story. Although his attachment and sentiments for Tom are described as strong, it doesn't feel so. I had difficulties believing he was really head over heel for Tom... yes, he goes to great length for Tom but his easiness in giving him up wasn't elaborated on enough and it struck as cold. My other bone of contention is with the writing. It did not flow smoothly, and was often awkward enough to disturb me from the story.

Overall, I enjoyed the read, mostly because of the think time put into the Shifters and their world, and the relationship had its good moments.