Review: Landlocked in Foreign Skin by Drew Huff

Rating: 7/10

How far would you go to reclaim your stolen body? The Fisherman would do anything.

Anything to return to their natural, monstrous state in the alien oceans of Europa. But they’ve been kidnapped, trapped on a human ship, forced into human form–very pathetic–and dragged into a mad human princess’s plot to find an eldritch god. A princess that also seems…very interested in sharing a bed. Strange. All of this is strange.

The Fisherman can’t fathom why anyone would want to be human.

Small wonder. The Fisherman’s 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, a cruel princess, owns the ship, desperate to find the god in the hopes that it will heal her mortally-injured girlfriend. The Fisherman is stuck in a female human form and pulled into a toxic romantic relationship with Dame Isobel– in a world where being LGBT is punishable by death. In the midst of this insanity, it’s quite clear to the Fisherman: Humanity is confusing, inefficient, and messy.

A sapphic, sci-fi, underwater, whodunnit, dripping with erotica and body horror, “Landlocked in Foreign Skin,” by Drew Huff fits into no boxes other than perhaps “bizarre, ambitious and glorious, genre-bending mess.” When I read “Free Burn,” earlier this year I knew that Huff was a) a rising star in the genre, and b) not someone to shy away from high octane horror and higher-concept plots. Her latest novella only reinforces my hypothesis. Imagine Mira Grant’s “Into The Drowning Deep,” or Tim McGregor’s “Lure,” had a torrid affair, with Henry James’ “The Jolly Corner,” and… Among Us. This would be the result, their monstrous lovechild, their little mermaid if you will. I already knew that Huff was good, and now I’m sure that she is great–  this feels like a plot only an octopus could juggle-  and I’m already counting the days until I get to read the upcoming “The Divine Flesh!” Anyway, whilst you wait, you should nab this one… you can, from January 28th.

Where do I even start? We follow a “Fisherman,” an incredibly powerful aquatic creature that has the ability to shapeshift and transform, stripped of that power and held hostage upon the ENS Princess. Dame Isobel has been shunned by her parents, members of the Europa elite, for her homosexuality- and, despite her illustrious quarters on the ship, is, in a way, also a prisoner. What follows is frankly bonkers. An interspecies love affair? Bargaining with ancient beings? …A string of brutal murders that  simply couldn’t have been committed by a human. 

Whilst Drew baits us with the promise of underwater doppelgangers, beneath the surface, Huff, to put it plainly, explores a bunch of stuff. Heavy themes, bigotry, classism, homophobia and society as a whole are certainly not shied away from throughout. Europa appears to be a rather fantastical place on the surface, but it doesn’t take long to realise it’s really, really, quite familiar. “Hey, look at this ridiculous caricature of an elitist, and oppressive society… see anything familiar?” Spoiler: Yes you do. 

The genius of Huff’s social critique lies in her choice of narrator. We’re given an “outsider,” perspective if you will. “The Fisherman,” observes our obsession with status, conformity and control, with almost a morbid curiosity. Why is it that we are so cruel to one another? Yes, our narrator being an oblivious underwater shapeshifter is more than justified for the sole reason that it creates a hilarious “Eleanor Oliphant,” “Sheldon Cooper,” kind of tone, but this is also brilliant thematically. Your stereotypical mermaid is symbolic of fluidity anyway, a creature that is human and non-human, a creature that depending on your source, can live on sea or land, a symbolism that is only exacerbated by the fisherman’s shape shifting abilities. Perhaps this mirrors how we, in comparison, fit ourselves into boxes, or rather, are forced into boxes, within a society that insists on rigid categories and definitions- gender, sexuality, class… power. Huff delivers a rebellious, gill-covered middle finger to these expectations, delivered with the kind of weird, seductive charm you’d expect from a creature who can breathe underwater and would definitely eat your face.

Huff says a lot with “Landlocked in Foreign Skin,” and she says it with wit, intelligence, and just the right amount of sexy weirdness. A sharp and seductive social critique, that is as enchanting as it is disarming, and disarming as it it gory- this one is well worth the read. January 28th folks!