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BOOK REVIEW

VERDICT

10/10 Gear points

• Author: Derek Landy

• Publisher: HarperCollins

• Genre: Modern Fantasy, Horror

• Book 1 in the series

• Age Range: Teens-to-adults

Synopsis

Skulduggery Pleasant starts with 12-year-old Stephanie Edgely attending her uncle’s funeral and the reading of his will. During the will-reading, she meets a mysterious friend of her uncle named Skulduggery Pleasant. Later that night Stephanie’s attacked by a man asking for something that she doesn’t understand. She is saved immediately afterwards by Skulduggery and learns that he’s a “living skeleton” that can walk, talk and think despite having no flesh.

Skulduggery then explains that magic exists, that he’s a detective that investigates magical crimes, that Stephanie’s uncle had been his friend and was affiliated with the world of magic. Stephanie then joins Skulduggery in his investigation to find out if her uncle’s death was because of natural causes or if he was killed with magic.

Review

The Skulduggery Pleasant series’ story had certain benchmarks that really surprised me (in a good way) when first reading it and are demonstrated aptly in the first book. First, despite having magic, magic isn’t the be-all/end-all of the series where “having stronger magic or being better at it, is an instant win”, this is NOT the case in Skulduggery Pleasant and there’s a particular emphasis on the necessity of hand-to-hand combat and use of modern firearms.

The second thing I like about the series is that dangling plot threads from previous books are integrated into the plotlines of later books in a way that feels seamless.

And the third thing is the apparent lack of plot armour. Main characters can die, and there are constant reminders of that at all times in the series. When the main characters come face to face with something absurdly powerful, they mostly run to survive or use a prepared countermeasure. And when they fight these threats directly, they only survive if there’s a plausible method for them to survive, but these methods tend to have big costs (like being unable to help for multiple books afterwards). The main reason why Stephanie was able to survive the events of Book 1 despite being a twelve-year-old and having no magic is that all the other characters did their best to keep her safe.

My favourite character throughout the entire series is China Sorrows due to her having the most chaotic development path throughout the series. She starts as an untrustworthy info broker, then Skulduggery and Stephanie learn something about China’s actions in the past that causes Skulduggery to break off his acquaintanceship with her. And near the end of the series, China becomes a necessary piece in the events of the story.