What do you think?
Rate this book
Skinner
Skinner founded his career in "asset protection" on fear. To touch anyone under his protection was to invite destruction. A savagely effective methodology, until Skinner's CIA handlers began to fear him as much as his enemies did and banished him to the hinterlands of the intelligence community.
Now, an ornate and evolving cyber-terrorist attack is about to end that long exile. His asset is Jae, a roboticist with a gift for seeing the underlying systems violently shaping a new era of global guerrilla warfare.
At the root of it all is a young boy, the innocent seed of a plot grown in the slums of Mumbai. Brought to flower, that plot will tip the balance of world power in a perilous new direction.
A combination of Le Carre spycraft with Stephenson techno-philosophy from the novelist hailed by the Washington Post as "the voice of twenty-first century crime fiction," Skinner is Charlie Huston's masterpiece -- a new kind of thriller for a new kind of world.
Now, an ornate and evolving cyber-terrorist attack is about to end that long exile. His asset is Jae, a roboticist with a gift for seeing the underlying systems violently shaping a new era of global guerrilla warfare.
At the root of it all is a young boy, the innocent seed of a plot grown in the slums of Mumbai. Brought to flower, that plot will tip the balance of world power in a perilous new direction.
A combination of Le Carre spycraft with Stephenson techno-philosophy from the novelist hailed by the Washington Post as "the voice of twenty-first century crime fiction," Skinner is Charlie Huston's masterpiece -- a new kind of thriller for a new kind of world.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
62 people are currently reading
1422 people want to read
About the author
Charlie Huston
101 books1,277 followersCharlie Huston is an American novelist, screenwriter, and comic book writer known for his genre-blending storytelling and character-driven narratives. His twelve novels span crime, horror, and science fiction, and have been published by Ballantine, Del Rey, Mulholland, and Orion, with translations in nine languages. He is the creator of the Henry Thompson trilogy, beginning with Caught Stealing, which was announced in 2024 as a forthcoming film adaptation directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Austin Butler. Huston’s stand-alone novels include The Shotgun Rule, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, Sleepless, and Skinner. He also authored the vampire noir series Joe Pitt Casebooks while living in Manhattan and later California. Huston has written pilots for FX, FOX, Sony, and Tomorrow Studios, served as a writer and producer on FOX’s Gotham, and developed original projects such as Arcadia. In comics, he rebooted Moon Knight for Marvel, contributed to Ultimates Annual, and penned the Wolverine: The Best There Is series.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 182 reviews
August 19, 2013
You gotta love a book in which the weapons used by the bad-ass hero include a pair of socks and a ruler.
Skinner was raised in a closed environment as part of a screwy experiment from his autistic parents, and as an adult he worked for an international security firm called Kestrel where he became legendary for his unique method. Skinner’s Maxim dictated that if anything happened to anyone under his protection, that he would wreak bloody vengeance on anyone and everyone responsible. This scorched earth policy worked well for a while, but eventually Skinner outlived his usefulness and had to go underground when Kestrel tried to arrange a permanent retirement for him.
Terrance was Skinner’s boss who was forced out of Kestrel, but they want him back to track down the people responsible for a cyber-attack on the US. Terrance recruits Jae, an analyst with a talent for building robots and OCD tendencies that allow her to find patterns in the chaos of world events, and he contacts Skinner and talks him into providing protection for her. Jae had a bad experience with Kestrel previously and doesn’t trust them so she and Skinner have that in common. The two race around the globe uncovering a vast conspiracy that somehow involves a slum in Mumbai.
Charlie Huston used to crank out hard boiled books featuring criminals and/or vampires and then fill them up with enough attitude, atmosphere and graphic violence to make them highly entertaining reads. He was good enough that he probably could have had a successful career if he had no bigger ambitions, but Huston has been showing a remarkable capacity for growth over his last several books. In Skinner, he takes what could just be a good set-up for an action spy thriller and gives it a huge amount of depth by using a couple of complex characters to throw around some very big ideas.
Skinner’s story examines how a bunch of variables like economics, political unrest and climate change have combined into a murky threat cloud that always hangs on the horizon and perpetually seems about to engulf the world. Huston has nailed that general unease that comes with scrolling through a day’s worth of news stories and realizing that the problems far outnumber the solutions. The Jae character is particularly good at conveying this since she has a tendency to start following patterns obsessively to conclusions that indicate the world is doomed. While there’s plenty of action, gee-whiz tech and the usual tropes of covert thrillers like suitcases full of fake passports and money, it’s the bigger picture that makes this feel a lot more important than just a typical spies-on-the-run-against-a-vast-conspiracy story.
My one gripe is that there’s almost too much in the book. I would have liked to get more with Skinner and Jae because they’re both such intriguing characters, but it kind of feels like we’re racing through their history to keep the core story moving. It almost seems like this could have been the conclusion of a larger series, but it was nice to get a self-contained story rather than an author just kicking off a new multi-book narrative so I won’t bitch too much about it.
Also posted at Shelf Inflicted.
Skinner was raised in a closed environment as part of a screwy experiment from his autistic parents, and as an adult he worked for an international security firm called Kestrel where he became legendary for his unique method. Skinner’s Maxim dictated that if anything happened to anyone under his protection, that he would wreak bloody vengeance on anyone and everyone responsible. This scorched earth policy worked well for a while, but eventually Skinner outlived his usefulness and had to go underground when Kestrel tried to arrange a permanent retirement for him.
Terrance was Skinner’s boss who was forced out of Kestrel, but they want him back to track down the people responsible for a cyber-attack on the US. Terrance recruits Jae, an analyst with a talent for building robots and OCD tendencies that allow her to find patterns in the chaos of world events, and he contacts Skinner and talks him into providing protection for her. Jae had a bad experience with Kestrel previously and doesn’t trust them so she and Skinner have that in common. The two race around the globe uncovering a vast conspiracy that somehow involves a slum in Mumbai.
Charlie Huston used to crank out hard boiled books featuring criminals and/or vampires and then fill them up with enough attitude, atmosphere and graphic violence to make them highly entertaining reads. He was good enough that he probably could have had a successful career if he had no bigger ambitions, but Huston has been showing a remarkable capacity for growth over his last several books. In Skinner, he takes what could just be a good set-up for an action spy thriller and gives it a huge amount of depth by using a couple of complex characters to throw around some very big ideas.
Skinner’s story examines how a bunch of variables like economics, political unrest and climate change have combined into a murky threat cloud that always hangs on the horizon and perpetually seems about to engulf the world. Huston has nailed that general unease that comes with scrolling through a day’s worth of news stories and realizing that the problems far outnumber the solutions. The Jae character is particularly good at conveying this since she has a tendency to start following patterns obsessively to conclusions that indicate the world is doomed. While there’s plenty of action, gee-whiz tech and the usual tropes of covert thrillers like suitcases full of fake passports and money, it’s the bigger picture that makes this feel a lot more important than just a typical spies-on-the-run-against-a-vast-conspiracy story.
My one gripe is that there’s almost too much in the book. I would have liked to get more with Skinner and Jae because they’re both such intriguing characters, but it kind of feels like we’re racing through their history to keep the core story moving. It almost seems like this could have been the conclusion of a larger series, but it was nice to get a self-contained story rather than an author just kicking off a new multi-book narrative so I won’t bitch too much about it.
Also posted at Shelf Inflicted.
August 12, 2013
I thought I had read some other things by Charlie Huston, but now I don’t think I have. Huston’s American crime novels have a noir quality that is unlike anything I have seen before. To say his writing is clipped does not really encompass the extent of its abbreviation. It is thought fragments. One of his main characters, Jae, tries to make connections or linkages between ideas and information coming from widely disparate sources. Trying to understand his characters’ conversations is a little like that, too.
Skinner is current. It mentions the Tsarnaev brothers, for goodness’ sake. And it has lots of very alienated folks—unusual folks that are outside the mainstream. For that reason, it feels futuristic. These folks apply a great deal of cerebral muscle to take the technology we use every day to the next level.
However, meeting so many unusual people in one book made me feel a little alienated. I felt as though I were reading about comic book characters, which is another of Huston’s fields.
But let’s go to the heart of the mystery: I loved it. I loved the concept, the endgame, the central core of the story. It plays out beautifully, and mocks the gatekeepers of “security” in this age of terrorism. It has us rooting for the disenfranchised among us, and tells us to trust our overseers less and trust our own judgment more.
Part of the story features the slums of Mumbai, India and part is played out throughout Europe and in the cyberspace occupied by American security companies contracted to defend the United States. I can’t help thinking a very good companion book is a very serious and important book of sociology produced by Katherine Boo, called Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. In that book Boo shows us the [almost] limitless survival capacity of slum dwellers who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by innovating to live. Skinner carries the same theme.
In the end, I felt this was a very masculine voice talking to other masculine minds in a sort of video game mentality and graphic novel sort of jargon. His female character was aberrant, as were many of his male characters. They had a quality of unreality. For the reason that I could actually see in my mind’s eye the graphic depiction of his scenes, I found it interesting. It seemed less like literature than amusement, but that’s probably what he was aiming for.
Skinner is current. It mentions the Tsarnaev brothers, for goodness’ sake. And it has lots of very alienated folks—unusual folks that are outside the mainstream. For that reason, it feels futuristic. These folks apply a great deal of cerebral muscle to take the technology we use every day to the next level.
However, meeting so many unusual people in one book made me feel a little alienated. I felt as though I were reading about comic book characters, which is another of Huston’s fields.
But let’s go to the heart of the mystery: I loved it. I loved the concept, the endgame, the central core of the story. It plays out beautifully, and mocks the gatekeepers of “security” in this age of terrorism. It has us rooting for the disenfranchised among us, and tells us to trust our overseers less and trust our own judgment more.
Part of the story features the slums of Mumbai, India and part is played out throughout Europe and in the cyberspace occupied by American security companies contracted to defend the United States. I can’t help thinking a very good companion book is a very serious and important book of sociology produced by Katherine Boo, called Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. In that book Boo shows us the [almost] limitless survival capacity of slum dwellers who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by innovating to live. Skinner carries the same theme.
In the end, I felt this was a very masculine voice talking to other masculine minds in a sort of video game mentality and graphic novel sort of jargon. His female character was aberrant, as were many of his male characters. They had a quality of unreality. For the reason that I could actually see in my mind’s eye the graphic depiction of his scenes, I found it interesting. It seemed less like literature than amusement, but that’s probably what he was aiming for.
June 10, 2014
MAGNIFICENT!!!
I went from hating this book for a variety of misguided reasons to loving every chapter that remained.
I'll try to come up with a proper review of this later.
Outstanding novel!
Re-Rated/Re-Reviewed
or (Take Two)
In the immortal words of songwriters/poets James Johnson, Ernestine Smith, & Al Curry (as covered by The Cadets) in "Stranded In The Jungle":
GREAT GOOGLY-MOOGLY!
What was I ON last night???
This book is hardly "MAGNIFICENT". It's flawed to the brink of being unreadable.
Originally rated 5 stars I'm sorry to report that I've re-rated this book down to 3 stars and feel I'm being charitable. Not that Charlie Huston would ever need my charity.
This book tries to cover way too much ground in not-quite 400 pages. Too many characters to juggle in the reader's mind, too many plot-strands to keep up with... tiresome business.
It's an espionage/cyber-terror thriller about a psychologically impaired assassin employed by a Halliburton-like global defense contractor.
It's also about an emotionally damaged techie/adventurer (employed by the same defense contractor as the lead character) who likes to take lots of psychedelics and amphetamines while roving across remote deserts frolicking with her self-designed robot friends to "wind down" between assignments. She's also something of what ol' Art Bell used to call a "remote viewer" -meaning she imagines she can discern the future by dubious mathematical configurations and concepts she's dreamed up on her own. She has a bit of the digital tarot-card counter in her mental make-up apparently.
And it's also about a young boy living in a Bombay/Mumbai slum with his brilliant physicist/electronics whiz of a father and his pistol wielding, sharp-shooter mother.
My god but does this book ever meander -and you think this review is jitter induced.
Look -I was 265 pages into this novel (I refused to put it down because ...hell -it's by Charlie Huston for God's snakes!) before I stopped hating it.
Somewhere around pages 265-275, this book slips a gear and ratchets into overdrive becoming an action-packed Daniel Craig-as-James Bond movie-thriller.
And it won me over.
Another fascinating aspect of this novel is the personal background story of the protagonist "Skinner". Why is he such a remorseless killer? He lacks empathy, silly!
These origin strands are woven through-out the second half of the novel.
Similar to the way Ian Fleming's "James Bond" was designed by Bond's mysterious benefactor, this killer wasn't born psychopathic he was molded that way via behavior modification.
I really had difficulty with this novel for more than half of its length but by the final third I'd learned to love it.
I doubt that I'll ever return for another read ...unlike Huston's The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death or The Shotgun Rule.
The 1st half of the book was like plowing a 16 acre field without benefit of tractor or mule but the last half to one third was an action packed thrill ride.
Your mileage may vary.
I went from hating this book for a variety of misguided reasons to loving every chapter that remained.
I'll try to come up with a proper review of this later.
Outstanding novel!
Re-Rated/Re-Reviewed
or (Take Two)
In the immortal words of songwriters/poets James Johnson, Ernestine Smith, & Al Curry (as covered by The Cadets) in "Stranded In The Jungle":
GREAT GOOGLY-MOOGLY!
What was I ON last night???
This book is hardly "MAGNIFICENT". It's flawed to the brink of being unreadable.
Originally rated 5 stars I'm sorry to report that I've re-rated this book down to 3 stars and feel I'm being charitable. Not that Charlie Huston would ever need my charity.
This book tries to cover way too much ground in not-quite 400 pages. Too many characters to juggle in the reader's mind, too many plot-strands to keep up with... tiresome business.
It's an espionage/cyber-terror thriller about a psychologically impaired assassin employed by a Halliburton-like global defense contractor.
It's also about an emotionally damaged techie/adventurer (employed by the same defense contractor as the lead character) who likes to take lots of psychedelics and amphetamines while roving across remote deserts frolicking with her self-designed robot friends to "wind down" between assignments. She's also something of what ol' Art Bell used to call a "remote viewer" -meaning she imagines she can discern the future by dubious mathematical configurations and concepts she's dreamed up on her own. She has a bit of the digital tarot-card counter in her mental make-up apparently.
And it's also about a young boy living in a Bombay/Mumbai slum with his brilliant physicist/electronics whiz of a father and his pistol wielding, sharp-shooter mother.
My god but does this book ever meander -and you think this review is jitter induced.
Look -I was 265 pages into this novel (I refused to put it down because ...hell -it's by Charlie Huston for God's snakes!) before I stopped hating it.
Somewhere around pages 265-275, this book slips a gear and ratchets into overdrive becoming an action-packed Daniel Craig-as-James Bond movie-thriller.
And it won me over.
Another fascinating aspect of this novel is the personal background story of the protagonist "Skinner". Why is he such a remorseless killer? He lacks empathy, silly!
These origin strands are woven through-out the second half of the novel.
Similar to the way Ian Fleming's "James Bond" was designed by Bond's mysterious benefactor, this killer wasn't born psychopathic he was molded that way via behavior modification.
I really had difficulty with this novel for more than half of its length but by the final third I'd learned to love it.
I doubt that I'll ever return for another read ...unlike Huston's The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death or The Shotgun Rule.
The 1st half of the book was like plowing a 16 acre field without benefit of tractor or mule but the last half to one third was an action packed thrill ride.
Your mileage may vary.
June 2, 2013
Wow. Been waiting for something new from Huston for several years now. SKINNER was definitely worth the wait. An espionage thriller for the information age. Progressive thinking, an almost autistic level of detail, drenched in paranoia and imbued by social media. How to describe the plot? Can't give away much without spoiling the fun but includes everything from Naxalites to a global genocide meme. Mind boggling. Skinner's maxim is truly frightening. Echoes of Le Carre & William Gibson but an entirely new direction for Charlie Huston. Highly recommended.
February 20, 2013
Charlie Huston is back! I know it's a bit early but this may just be the best thriller of 2013. Remarkably prescient - many of the plot points in the novel were happening in real time in the real world as I was reading. I was a big fan of his Joe Pitt and Hank Thompson books but this is on a whole other level. Deserves to be a blockbuster...
September 28, 2013
Complex narrative in league with the finest James Ellroy. In Charlie Huston's current day spy thriller, protagonist, Skinner is embroiled in modern global warfare, a deadly game of smoke and mirrors where trust is a commodity he can ill afford.
Skinner's primary occupation is that of protecting his assets as deemed by the secretive agency he's employed. Skinner will do anything to protect his asset, murdering any threat with little or no remorse.
He's a unique assassin, a victim of experimental parents who used him as a test case for life inside a skinner box for most of his youth. The breeding ground for his violent and emotionless ways introduced from birth sprouted a highly effective and dangerous man who would eventually be an asset and liability to the spy game.
SKINNER showcases Charlie Huston's diversity as a writer. The style far removed from his earlier works in the Henry Thomspon noir trilogy and the Joe Pitt casebooks. The plot is deeply entrenched in current events and plays upon conspiracy theories and Government corruption and greed without over-reaching.
I had been eagerly anticipating something new from Charlie Huston, having been a fan since he first appeared on my reading radar some years ago and SKINNER didn't disappoint.
Highly recommended for fans of spy v spy and high octane, intelligent thrillers.
This review also appears on my blog: http://justaguythatlikes2read.blogspo...
Skinner's primary occupation is that of protecting his assets as deemed by the secretive agency he's employed. Skinner will do anything to protect his asset, murdering any threat with little or no remorse.
He's a unique assassin, a victim of experimental parents who used him as a test case for life inside a skinner box for most of his youth. The breeding ground for his violent and emotionless ways introduced from birth sprouted a highly effective and dangerous man who would eventually be an asset and liability to the spy game.
SKINNER showcases Charlie Huston's diversity as a writer. The style far removed from his earlier works in the Henry Thomspon noir trilogy and the Joe Pitt casebooks. The plot is deeply entrenched in current events and plays upon conspiracy theories and Government corruption and greed without over-reaching.
I had been eagerly anticipating something new from Charlie Huston, having been a fan since he first appeared on my reading radar some years ago and SKINNER didn't disappoint.
Highly recommended for fans of spy v spy and high octane, intelligent thrillers.
This review also appears on my blog: http://justaguythatlikes2read.blogspo...
November 25, 2013
I have always enjoyed Charlie Huston's work. I loved the Hank Thompson trilogy. I enjoyed the Joe Pitt books. I laughed out loud reading "The Mystic Arts . . . . " However, I did not enjoy Skinner. Too much over writing. What I mean, I found myself skipping paragraphs of writing that was wasting my time. Did not need to be there. The characters were boring and the storyline was boring. I don't care about the WTO and all of the "Evil Corporate People" out there having meetings. I don't care about the people who like to play "Anarchrist Dress up" and smash stuff to disrupt the meetings of "Evil Corporate People." I don't care about techno robots and spiders and worms. There was no chemistry between Skinner and his asset. They were both boring. I realize I am in the minority judging by the reviews but this is my take on the book. Sorry Charlie, no bueno.
August 4, 2013
I wanted to stop reading it in the middle of the book. I finished it and should have followed my first instinct.
Read
June 28, 2013Read the preview, and i really disliked his writing style. Won't be finishing this one!
June 28, 2013
At first I had trouble figuring out why I didn't want to continue reading this book. I usually love thrillers. I was very excited to receive a complimentary review copy from Mulholland Books through Goodreads. Then I realized the writing style bugged me. I felt like I strained to read through the book. Readers shouldn't have to work hard to enjoy a book. It took me too long to figure out who is kicking whom because many sentences were long prepositional phrases. This would probably be an exciting movie or TV show.
Skinner protects assets (people). He believes the only way to secure an asset is to insure that the cost of acquiring it is greater than its value. Skinner has a terrifying reputation. His childhood wasn't conventional. He was kept in a basement and raised like a lab rat. Skinner reminds me of Jarod from The Pretender TV show, but scarier. Skinner lacks empathy and kills without regret. He's hired to protect Jae, a drugged out robot maker. Jae's assigned to find cyber terrorists. They go to Sweden, France, and end up in Mumbai slum. While Skinner travels and kills threats, he falls for Jae.
http://catoverlord.blogspot.com/2013/...
https://www.facebook.com/CatOverlord
Skinner protects assets (people). He believes the only way to secure an asset is to insure that the cost of acquiring it is greater than its value. Skinner has a terrifying reputation. His childhood wasn't conventional. He was kept in a basement and raised like a lab rat. Skinner reminds me of Jarod from The Pretender TV show, but scarier. Skinner lacks empathy and kills without regret. He's hired to protect Jae, a drugged out robot maker. Jae's assigned to find cyber terrorists. They go to Sweden, France, and end up in Mumbai slum. While Skinner travels and kills threats, he falls for Jae.
http://catoverlord.blogspot.com/2013/...
https://www.facebook.com/CatOverlord
January 8, 2014
Skinner works for Terence who runs Kestrel. Skinner is a product of his parents' psychological experiments as a child and he never learned emotions. He works in "asset protection," a bodyguard who will kill anyone who makes an attempt on his asset's life. The beginning of the book deals with a case gone bad and Skinner disappears for six years, but Terence calls him back to protect Jae, a genius who can see patterns in her head who builds robots. Terence has been forced out at Kestrel and Cross and Haven have taken over. When Terence is killed in Paris after meeting with Skinner and laying out the plan, Skinner knows Cross and Haven are dirty, too. Now, he is on the run with Jae, helping her read the patterns between a cyber attack that almost takes down the East Coast power grid and a small city in India. This read is an adrenaline-laced adventure teetering between spycraft and technological mayhem.
August 7, 2013
I read this because it was by Charlie Huston. Based upon his past books, I have the expectation that there is the occasional dud. This one was okay; not great. The nice part is that he gets all the cyber-security stuff right more or less. Not technical but he at least uses the right works in the right context. The drawback for me was that, unlike his Hank Thompson character, the people in this book are just too smart, too motivated, too perfectly violent to be believable. He blows it by giving away the ending about 2/3rds through. It's just one sentence but once you see it, it's all over. That's a huge minus for me when I predict the ending early and then it actually comes to pass. I get the impression that he's writing this story with an eye to having it picked up as an action movie. It has all the required action movie elements.
August 14, 2013
The plot follows a cast of private contractors functioning on behalf of agencies that do the work previously handled by the CIA, the NSA, and the DoD in the now seemingly antiquated days of the cold war. A global drama unfolds with the cast searching for answers only to reveal a more shocking drama.
Charlie Huston has a gift for clever yet touching prose, dark worlds that feel both real and noir at the same time, and characters that serve as sounding boards to the very essence of human condition. Skinner is a novel that implements all of these skills and combines them in a synergistic weave that outshines all of his previous novels. More grounded in reality than most of his dangerous settings, the very accurate world of Skinner unfolds with a complexity and heart that kept me enthralled and surprised all the way through the novel.
Charlie Huston has a gift for clever yet touching prose, dark worlds that feel both real and noir at the same time, and characters that serve as sounding boards to the very essence of human condition. Skinner is a novel that implements all of these skills and combines them in a synergistic weave that outshines all of his previous novels. More grounded in reality than most of his dangerous settings, the very accurate world of Skinner unfolds with a complexity and heart that kept me enthralled and surprised all the way through the novel.
July 5, 2013
Charlie Huston has a wonderful way of taking the familiar and adding something you weren't expecting. His vampire crime noir series as well as his last novel "Sleepless" are great examples of this. In the former Huston takes the dime novel detective genre and drops in dead into vampire mythology. And in the latter he gives us a police thriller set in a world that no longer sleeps. And his latest novel "Skinner" continues this trend by taking the stock spy thriller and adding to it a boy kept in a Skinner Box until he was 12, and then let him loose on the world. Huston keeps you guessing all the way to the end, and along the way touches on topics you weren't expecting. A great book by a great writer.
November 27, 2016
I have never heard about Charlie Huston before. I have read this book because I read the blurb and found it interesting. I have many very mixed feelings about this book.
I don't think I liked the writing style of the author. After some time I got used to it but still it was wearing. What I definitely liked are the characters who are unique and fascinating. Skinner with his past is definitely not an ordinary hero. With Jae they make an interesting couple.
I only wish the ending is different. I would like to see Skinner find his peace at least a bit and not being so lonely again after all the things that happened. Also, I didn't see any hints about the continuation of this story, that's a pity.
I don't think I liked the writing style of the author. After some time I got used to it but still it was wearing. What I definitely liked are the characters who are unique and fascinating. Skinner with his past is definitely not an ordinary hero. With Jae they make an interesting couple.
I only wish the ending is different. I would like to see Skinner find his peace at least a bit and not being so lonely again after all the things that happened. Also, I didn't see any hints about the continuation of this story, that's a pity.
January 12, 2015
“Não considere nenhuma prática como imutável. Mude e esteja pronto a mudar novamente. Não aceite verdade eterna. Experimente.”
(Skinner)
(Skinner)
October 3, 2019
Didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did. A bit to gory for my preference
(but part of the story). Unusual and relevant.
(but part of the story). Unusual and relevant.
March 15, 2014
A superior thriller. With a nice twist at the end. And an interesting hero. But the writing. The writing has some quirks to it. That can get annoying after a while. It sneaks up on you. Then. It happens so often. You can't stop. Noticing it. You wonder. Is the author being paid by the period.
The hero is a remorseless and inventive killer named Skinner, so named because his parents were behaviorists who kept him in one of B.F. Skinner's boxes until he was 12. They were observing him, observing his reactions to various stimuli. Then someone found out and Skinner was dragged, screaming in terror, out of the box and into the world.
By the time he reaches college, Skinner has been tracked down and recruited by master spy named Terrence to work in "asset protection" -- guarding someone who's very valuable to Terrence's global security company, Kestrel. Skinner comes up with "Skinner's Maxim," namely that he'll make it so bloody expensive for anyone to attack one of his assets that it won't be worth the pain and terror and trouble.
But then something goes wrong on one of his assignments and although Skinner makes it out alive, he suspects Terrence -- his only friend -- set him up. Rather than kill Terrence, Skinner chooses to disappear.
He's brought back from oblivion by Terrence, asking a favor: Please protect an asset named Jae who is, in her way, just as psychologically damaged as Skinner. When we first meet her, she's “running around the desert in a 40-year-old Land Rover, living on a diet of amphetamines and psychedelics, playing with robots, and occasionally crawling to the edge of civilization to do whatever piecework visual analysis you manage to scrape up for her.” Like Skinner, she often speaks. In sentence fragments. And when they talk to each other. It's very distracting for a reader.
These two damaged people find they have some things in common and they manage to follow a trail of obscure clues to something strange that's going on in India -- with action-packed stops in Miami, Stockholm and Paris. The plot moves quickly enough that it's not until the end you notice just how improbable this whole high-tech scavenger hunt has become.
This is the first of Huston's books I've read and some of his writing shows a real flair, such as Jae's realization that she's become something of an adrenaline junkie along with a planeload of rescuers headed for post-earthquake Haiti to try to find survivors: "Dulled to any scenario that did not involve screaming sirens, the unbalanced sway inside a speeding vehicle, pop of small arms, deafening shudder of helicopter blades just overhead, and blood, still wet, squelching underfoot." That is some kind of a vivid sentence. I just wish there had been. More of that. And less. Of the staccato stuff.
The hero is a remorseless and inventive killer named Skinner, so named because his parents were behaviorists who kept him in one of B.F. Skinner's boxes until he was 12. They were observing him, observing his reactions to various stimuli. Then someone found out and Skinner was dragged, screaming in terror, out of the box and into the world.
By the time he reaches college, Skinner has been tracked down and recruited by master spy named Terrence to work in "asset protection" -- guarding someone who's very valuable to Terrence's global security company, Kestrel. Skinner comes up with "Skinner's Maxim," namely that he'll make it so bloody expensive for anyone to attack one of his assets that it won't be worth the pain and terror and trouble.
But then something goes wrong on one of his assignments and although Skinner makes it out alive, he suspects Terrence -- his only friend -- set him up. Rather than kill Terrence, Skinner chooses to disappear.
He's brought back from oblivion by Terrence, asking a favor: Please protect an asset named Jae who is, in her way, just as psychologically damaged as Skinner. When we first meet her, she's “running around the desert in a 40-year-old Land Rover, living on a diet of amphetamines and psychedelics, playing with robots, and occasionally crawling to the edge of civilization to do whatever piecework visual analysis you manage to scrape up for her.” Like Skinner, she often speaks. In sentence fragments. And when they talk to each other. It's very distracting for a reader.
These two damaged people find they have some things in common and they manage to follow a trail of obscure clues to something strange that's going on in India -- with action-packed stops in Miami, Stockholm and Paris. The plot moves quickly enough that it's not until the end you notice just how improbable this whole high-tech scavenger hunt has become.
This is the first of Huston's books I've read and some of his writing shows a real flair, such as Jae's realization that she's become something of an adrenaline junkie along with a planeload of rescuers headed for post-earthquake Haiti to try to find survivors: "Dulled to any scenario that did not involve screaming sirens, the unbalanced sway inside a speeding vehicle, pop of small arms, deafening shudder of helicopter blades just overhead, and blood, still wet, squelching underfoot." That is some kind of a vivid sentence. I just wish there had been. More of that. And less. Of the staccato stuff.
August 7, 2013
actually loved the non action scenes and dialogue more than the action scenes, just a cool tale, it stretches at points, the whole india part was a bit 'eh,' but this was still a good one...charlie huston is fast becoming one of my favorite authors...i hope we get more skinner in the future...
"Intimately aware of how the unexpected and nigh on impossible can manifest and warp the fabric of one's personal space and time." (34)
"There are people, more than a few, who are very good at identifying threats. They can, I've seen this, they can look at a landscape, an airport terminal, and see all the viable attacks that might be mounted in that environment. So they build their security around a set of scenarios. Their opposition, the very good ones, understand this. They have a limited number of attacks in any given situation, yielding a limited number of defensive postures. The result is something like chess." (140)
"Making people look another direction is easy enough. After that you need to move confidently. People are conditioned not to question confidence." (279)
"Soundtrack in the modern age, tinny, slight, cranked-up, always referencing the past." (289)
"Intimately aware of how the unexpected and nigh on impossible can manifest and warp the fabric of one's personal space and time." (34)
"There are people, more than a few, who are very good at identifying threats. They can, I've seen this, they can look at a landscape, an airport terminal, and see all the viable attacks that might be mounted in that environment. So they build their security around a set of scenarios. Their opposition, the very good ones, understand this. They have a limited number of attacks in any given situation, yielding a limited number of defensive postures. The result is something like chess." (140)
"Making people look another direction is easy enough. After that you need to move confidently. People are conditioned not to question confidence." (279)
"Soundtrack in the modern age, tinny, slight, cranked-up, always referencing the past." (289)
November 20, 2015
I've followed Charlie Huston's career since the Joe Pitt series started up, and he's always kept me entertained (though, as I believe I've written on here before, the last two of the Henry Thompson trilogy were a huge bummer). Skinner's by far the most normal book he's written thus far, with his less conventional habits (dashes replacing quotation marks being the most prominent) being largely absent. It still shows his brilliance with plotting and characterization, and his transfer to a new genre (espionage/thriller) takes nothing away from his deft touch with genre convention, nor his ability to say something new within well-established formulas. If I missed anything from his earlier work here, it was the abscence of a first-person narrative and the way it gave his earlier novels a very defined voice. However, within the third person omniscient narrative, he still found the opportunity to give us glimpses inside the heads of several different characters, so this is a minor complaint. This novel was as gripping and enjoyable as most of his previous work, and while I still think I'd enjoy another Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs Of Death-type thing slightly more, I will never complain about getting books this good from one of my favorite authors of the past decade.
November 13, 2015
Huston gets extra credit for creating two of the most interesting--and deeply flawed--characters you will ever encounter in fiction. Skinner and Jae are two seriously screwed up people, but somehow Huston makes it easy to root for them.
Huston's edgy, choppy prose style requires all your attention to follow. My first impulse is to describe it like a firefight, with words and sentences stuttering and popping all over the place. Instead, I'd rather say a sentence fragmentation grenade went off in Huston's word processing program. If you have a low tolerance for. Incomplete. And choppy sentences, then don't. Read it, I mean.
I was somewhat dissatisfied by the end, and when Jae and Skinner figure out the Very Bad Secret, I sprained my eyeball's in a disbelieving roll. Very nearly a severe eye-sprain. The counter-point story, set in India, had an equally non-thrilling reveal that fell flat.
Stylistically, Huston pushes the envelope, and his characters (as I mentioned) rock the house, but from a plot-building standpoint, he checks more than a few cliché boxes.
Huston's edgy, choppy prose style requires all your attention to follow. My first impulse is to describe it like a firefight, with words and sentences stuttering and popping all over the place. Instead, I'd rather say a sentence fragmentation grenade went off in Huston's word processing program. If you have a low tolerance for. Incomplete. And choppy sentences, then don't. Read it, I mean.
I was somewhat dissatisfied by the end, and when Jae and Skinner figure out the Very Bad Secret, I sprained my eyeball's in a disbelieving roll. Very nearly a severe eye-sprain. The counter-point story, set in India, had an equally non-thrilling reveal that fell flat.
Stylistically, Huston pushes the envelope, and his characters (as I mentioned) rock the house, but from a plot-building standpoint, he checks more than a few cliché boxes.
July 26, 2016
Normally I can tolerate Huston's writing style perfectly well, but in this case it was amplified to deafening volume.
The choppy sentence fragments, the smokescreen plots, the refusal to indicate who is speaking in any dialogue exchange, etc. In previous books, the characters had distinct enough speech patterns that you could identify the speaker of each line of dialogue through context and verbal cues. Here, only Cross and Smith have a unique verbal style, while everyone else (including the main characters!) sound the same, so you don't know wtf is going on. Also, a heavy reliance on current events has dated the material prematurely, and in another couple of years, it will hardly be worth reading.
Despite these structural flaws, the characters are intriguing and it built to a strong climax, marking a return to form.
The choppy sentence fragments, the smokescreen plots, the refusal to indicate who is speaking in any dialogue exchange, etc. In previous books, the characters had distinct enough speech patterns that you could identify the speaker of each line of dialogue through context and verbal cues. Here, only Cross and Smith have a unique verbal style, while everyone else (including the main characters!) sound the same, so you don't know wtf is going on. Also, a heavy reliance on current events has dated the material prematurely, and in another couple of years, it will hardly be worth reading.
Despite these structural flaws, the characters are intriguing and it built to a strong climax, marking a return to form.
August 31, 2013
ok - I suspect I will be in the minority in my review and let me say that I have read every book by CH except Sleepless - I could not finish that one. I don't even know what to say about this one...hmmm
It's so cryptic - why? Why is it all so cryptic? Who are these people? And who talks like them - so many conversations where no one speaks a complete sentence -it drove me crazy! The background on Skinner and his family is really interesting and I wish that was the story - and I guess the ultimate ending was a more positive view of world possibilities (see I am being cryptic because I don't want to spoil this - but if anyone reads this they are going ...what is she talking about?)
And all the computer stuff...boring..and to technical...I just didn't want to read it. The story took too long, it was too clever and complicated, and I almost didn't finish. So..it was ok.
It's so cryptic - why? Why is it all so cryptic? Who are these people? And who talks like them - so many conversations where no one speaks a complete sentence -it drove me crazy! The background on Skinner and his family is really interesting and I wish that was the story - and I guess the ultimate ending was a more positive view of world possibilities (see I am being cryptic because I don't want to spoil this - but if anyone reads this they are going ...what is she talking about?)
And all the computer stuff...boring..and to technical...I just didn't want to read it. The story took too long, it was too clever and complicated, and I almost didn't finish. So..it was ok.
July 8, 2013
I was very excited to try this author after receiving a review copy from Mulholland Books (via Goodreads). I had a hard time connecting with/caring about the characters. I'm not sure if it the book (writing style, story, etc) or that I am just finishing up a string of really great reads.
I will say that the story is not your typical thriller and definitely not predictable (always a plus). The main character, Skinner, protects people by making the cost of acquiring them greater than their value. He does this by relentlessly killing. Skinner has no empathy and can therefore kill without regret.
I will say that the story is not your typical thriller and definitely not predictable (always a plus). The main character, Skinner, protects people by making the cost of acquiring them greater than their value. He does this by relentlessly killing. Skinner has no empathy and can therefore kill without regret.
July 18, 2013
Skinner had a really interesting story and title character. I enjoyed reading about Skinner and his history. He's definitely a little different then what i'm used to seeing in a story and that kept me intrigued. I liked all the little twists and turns this story had to offer. Skinner had a great ending for such a wonderful story. I definitely wouldn't mind seeing more Skinner in the future.
September 1, 2013
Skinner didn't end up being the sort of read I thought it would. It took a bit to get into the way Huston wrote, but I was thoroughly engaged by the end. A unique set of characters and a story that has current significance. I will definitely pick up more of Huston's work.
January 3, 2014
My favorite writer if thrillers currently, and this didn't change my mind.
April 12, 2023
A fast paced thriller with a plot that was sometimes hard to follow but it certainly paid off in the end. I didn't see that coming. My review from 2013.
July 28, 2013
I received this book from goodreads giveaway.
This book was a disapointment for me. I think I got lost in the over detailing and frankly found myself terribly bored trying to take it all in.
This book was a disapointment for me. I think I got lost in the over detailing and frankly found myself terribly bored trying to take it all in.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 182 reviews