NT Writers' Centre
My Account Membership
Cart [0]
  • Home
  • News
  • For Writers
    • Workshops
    • Writers’ First Steps (FAQ’s)
    • Writers' Groups
    • Member Profiles
    • Book Reviews
  • NT Writers Festival
    • About
    • Program
    • For Visitors
    • Previous Festivals
    • Watch or listen
    • Contact
  • Membership
  • Shop
    • Gift voucher: $100
    • Gift voucher: $50
    • All
    • Anthologies
    • Children’s
    • Indigenous
    • Non-Fiction
    • Novels
    • Poetry
    • Stage and Screen
    • Online Shop Submissions
  • Competitions
    • Current competitions
    • Submit your writing competition
  • About
  • Donate
  1. Home
  2. Book Reviews
  3. Pandemic Picks – Skin
12 May 2020 Book Reviews

Pandemic Picks – Skin

Skin, by Ilka Tampka,

Text Publishing, 2015

Review by Fiona Dorrell, 2020 NT Writers Festival Director

For something compulsively readable and almost entirely escapist, I suggest picking up Australian-author, Ilka Tampke’s historical-fantasy fiction, Skin. Ailia is on a quest to obtain the knowledge that will protect her people in the terrifying Roman invasion they face. But, abandoned at birth and without ‘skin’, she is forbidden to learn.

For the witchy, late-night reading teenager you thought you left firmly (if tragically) in your past, this book will be a happy feast. Ailia, if sometimes love-obsessed and eager-to-please, is ultimately a gutsy heroine on an exhilarating journey to come into her own more-than-human powers. Best of all, she is ruinously ensnared in a lush love-triangle that crosses between real and magical realms.

While being plenty fantastical, the book also raises some big questions. In imagining an animistic and matriarchal Iron Age Britain, and reanimating an old invasion saga, the book asks what gets lost in the violence of colonisation. As an Australian writer, Tampke is perhaps exploring the parallels with Australia’s invasion history and asking how the British came to become colonisers themselves.

If this has you curious, the great news is that there is an equally readable and thought-provoking book two, Songwoman.

 

Check out our upcoming Online Writing Clinic with Ilka Tampke CLICK HERE

Events

2020 Chief Minister's NT Book Awards

Workshops

Gift vouchers now available!

Online Clinic with Dr Sandra Thibodeaux

How Can Settlers Write First Nations' Characters Respectfully?

Contacts

  • Darwin
  • Alice Springs

Darwin Head Office

Level 2, Harbour View Plaza
8 McMinn Street
Darwin 0800
executive@ntwriters.com.au
+61-8 8941 2651

Postal Address

GPO Box 2255
Darwin, NT 0801

Alice Springs

Red Hot Arts Space
67 Bath Street
Alice Springs NT 0870
alice@ntwriters.com.au
+61-8 8952 3810

Postal Address

PO Box 4080
Alice Springs, NT 0871

Become a member

Find out more about membership benefits.

Join Now

Subscribe to our free e-Bulletin

Share

Facebook Twitter

Please show your support

Donate

Copyright © 2021 NT Writers' Centre. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy | Terms of User | Sales and Refunds