‘I was not yet one day old when Cookmother found me on the doorstep of the Tribequeen’s kitchen. She was on her way to our herb garden after tasting her stewed pork and finding it wanting in rosemary. I very nearly felt her leather sandal upon me before she noticed my tiny, swaddled shape.’

Ailia lives in Celtic Britain, in a time when the grasping arm of the Roman Empire threatens to destroy everything she holds dear. She has always been an outsider, for she has no totem, no ‘skin’. Without skin she is not permitted to learn or to marry. As her people prepare to face an uncertain future, Ailia must learn to embrace the power within herself if she is to help protect them.

This book starts off very well. The world of Celtic Britain is a fascinating one, so far removed from our own, so steeped in ancient traditions and sacred rituals. The brutality of some of these rituals is shocking and Tampke doesn’t spare any gory details. The atmosphere of Caer Cad in AD43 is rendered brilliantly on the page with fantastic, visceral descriptions.

However, the more I read, the less convinced I was by the world and the characters populating it. At first Ailia seems as if she’s going to be a strong protagonist, an outsider who carves a path through the world against all odds. But a lot of the time all she does is walk from one place to another, stumbling into teachers who give her vague lessons about her supposedly great destiny.

Her goal to discover the truth about her skin takes second place to the men in her life. That dreaded trope, the love triangle (just one of many clichés), rears its head here, with Ailia caught between two men and unable to choose between them. She spends a lot of the book moping around like a lovesick teenager – which, indeed, she is. She breaks the rules, forsakes her chance at learning and puts her people in danger, for the sake of men we don’t know enough about to understand her reasons for wanting to be with them.

I enjoyed the concept at the heart of the novel, with ‘skin’ binding the characters to the world around them. Elements of fantasy are woven skilfully with the real world of ancient Britain. But the concepts aren’t explained fully. Once I’d finished the book I still wasn’t sure how a child discovers their skin or what bearing different types of skin have on that child’s future.

The ending seemed to be shocking just for the sake of it. There was no resolution; just a climax, and then the end. Ailia’s actions had no outcome on the ending so the whole story felt somewhat pointless.

It’s frustrating because I feel Tampke missed a real opportunity here. Ailia could have been a great protagonist of a fantastic novel, with a brilliant setting and interesting concept, but she let that chance slip through her fingers. If she had focused on Ailia’s development as she grew to understand and embrace her new-found knowledge, this probably would have been a much better read.

As it was, I finished the book disappointed. Anyone looking for something similar, but better, should check out Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johanssen or The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Perhaps younger readers would enjoy it more, but I can’t be certain on that point.

The open ending makes it seem as if Tampke is preparing the way for a sequel, but I won’t be reading it.