Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Nonbinary sapphic MC, major sapphic character, secondary sapphic character, secondary nonbinary character/s
PoV: First-person, past-tense
ISBN: B0DVFQJYN1
Goodreads
The Fisherman can't fathom why anyone would want to be human. Small wonder. They've been ripped from their underwater home under Europa's ice, and stripped of their skin--the nebulous outer layer that enables them to shapeshift for survival. Imprisoned on a ship that's hunting for a mad undersea god, they must help the crew find it if they want to retrieve their skin and return home. Dame Isobel, an insane young heiress, owns the ship, desperate to find the god in the hopes that it will heal her lobotomized girlfriend. The Fisherman is stuck in a female human form. They're pulled into a toxic, codependent sexual relationship with Dame Isobel--in a world where homosexuality is punishable by death. In the midst of this insanity, it's quite clear to the Fisherman: Humanity is confusing, inefficient, and messy.
When Isobel reveals that she will never let the Fisherman go, even if they find the mad god, the Fisherman knows:
It's time to get violent.
Highlights
~eldritch horrors cannot be depended on
~eat the rich (and everybody else)
~fucking with space-selkies is a BAD idea
~trust no one
~choose violence
YE GODS, HOW MUCH I FREAKING LOVED THIS ONE, I CANNOT EVEN!
This is a dark, bitter story that twists in unexpected directions like a writhing eel. If you like selkies, you might want to try this out, because the selkie vibes are very strong here, especially in the first half – but it’s a bit like, what if fucking with selkies was a REALLY BAD IDEA, actually? What if selkies mostly ignored humanity and it would be a very, VERY bad idea to give them a reason to pay attention?
That’s more or less the premise, and I adore it.
Our unnamed protagonist is supposed to be an incredibly versatile shapeshifter living deep in the oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Their species aren’t super social, but at the same time, they know every other member of their species – there’s no such thing as an individual existing in secret. And they love learning; information, often in the form of stories, are currency for them. (As are questions, even without answers – I think the implication being because a new question gives you so much to think about? SO COOL.)
However, our mc is having a very bad day. Some spoiled rich girl, Dame Isabel, has had them hauled up out of the ocean, and their skin – which they need to shift shapes – cut away. Our mc only barely managed to mimic Isabel enough to turn more-or-less human before they lost all ability to transform. Cue an extremely toxic sexual relationship, which is about 2/3s the mc trying to pay/bargain for their skin back, and 1/3 the massive hormonal confusion that is being in a human body. (I got the idea that because the mc based their human form on Isabel, who is a lesbian, their form is attracted to human women like Isabel is attracted to human women. Don’t quote me on that, though.)
It’s so fucked-up! If you want to read about deeply fucked-up sapphics, with awful power dynamics and an alien’s confusion about human bodies, here you go! If you’re craving a lesbian character who is an unrepentantly terrible person in all the ways, ta da, you’re going to love Isabel! Do you, like me, wonder what it’s called when a human-looking being eats humans, because technically that can’t be cannibalism? I HAVE THE BOOK FOR YOU.
Crystal glasses thin-stemmed as optic nerves.
Huff’s writing is bleak and vicious in the most incredible way; the aliens are perhaps a bit less alien in their thinking than I prefer, but are still very satisfactorily Not Human. There’s so much raging awfulness in the mc’s situation, their helplessness and desperation is very, very visceral – as is their growing fury; they might be new to being human, but they shed the naiveté that comes with that pretty quickly, and it doesn’t take long before they understand that Isabel is never going to give their skin back.
Spoiler, but that doesn’t go terribly well for the humans.
This alone – the plot that’s described on the back of the book – would be more than enough for a really excellent horror short, but surprise! There’s much more to the story – so much more that I was stunned when I finished and realised how short this novella is (the paperback is only 166 pages!) And yet I hasten to assure you that nothing feels rushed, or like it didn’t get enough pagetime to pack the punch that was intended; Huff’s writing is so distilled that every word hits you like a truck. Nothing is flowery, but the language doesn’t feel annoyingly, simplistically blunt or bare, either. It’s more like…well, like it’s been skinned; it feels raw in a marvellous way I’m not sure how to articulate. I sped through Landlocked, and not because it’s so short, but because Huff had me hooked and I needed to know what was going to happen, who was (and wasn’t) going to get out of this story alive.
Was that blue material her skin? I ran my (palm) over it. (Silk) (organic) tasted a smell of chemical, (plant) (insect). A ghost-image flickered through my mind: An oblong (green) flat thing being chewed by another oblong thing, (bug), a fat living (larva) like my mid-year (summer) form?
The twisty, sneaky, horrifying layers to the story delighted me, and I can’t talk about any of it without spoilers, so I’ll just say: there’s a lot more going on than Isabel’s fuckery, and what we think is happening is…really not at all. IT’S SO SO SO GOOD, MY FRIENDS! SO GOOD!
And that’s without the deliciously alien perspective on humanity – human social rules, human hatreds, human society, the insight into all of which felt extremely satisfying to me as an autistic reader. (Is this why I love alien protagonists? Possibly!) I really loved the element that was this shapeshifter, someone/something who’s defined by constant change, being placed against humanity’s desire to be static, in direct conflict with that desire. I thought that was so clever, and done so well, and I REALLY wish I could talk about it without spoilers!
How human. The desire to never change. Never adapt.
Landlocked in Foreign Skin is just so much fun – a delicious, gory, monstrous revenge-fantasy for queers, where everyone is terrible and everything is messy. It’s whip-smart and wicked and it shapeshifts right in front of you, transforming from one story into something entirely different while you pick your jaw up off the floor. I adored it: expect to see it on my best-of-year list. I plan on immediately diving into Drew Huff’s backlist, because the mind that could come up with – and pull off! – this is one I absolutely need to read more of, PLEASE AND THANK YOU!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to decide which of Huff’s other works to try first…
Trigger warnings: View Spoiler »
This review has just made this book skyrocket to the top of my list of books to read on my publishing prep journey! Thank you so much!
Fantastic! You’re so welcome, I hope you love it as much as I did! :D