A Review of Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

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What a delightful read.

That is, it’s delightful if you enjoy reading a story about a 12-year-old protagonist getting roped into investigating her uncle’s mysterious death with a skeleton detective.

Oh and the skeleton detective tells her that a war between the forces of good and evil has been raging for quite some time now, and an ancient foe is preparing to bring a little more evil into the world. Well, okay, a lot of evil.

All in all, this story has your classic “Alice fell down a rabbit hole” beginning (if Alice were investigating a suspicious death in Wonderland) and the fast-paced action throughout the book doesn’t stop until the final page.

I think one of the things I enjoyed most about Skulduggery Pleasant was the banter between characters. It was a dry and sarcastic back-and-forth sort of banter and gave me more than a few chuckles.

I also appreciated how the older characters tried to dissuade the protagonist from journeying further into the dangers of the magical world. They encouraged her to go back to her normal life. Realistic, no? But admirably, she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t leave, not with everything she had already seen. She had to have answers about her uncle’s death, and she had to help stop the villain from taking over the world.

I know there are more books in this series, and I’ll likely get around to reading them eventually. With Skulduggery Pleasant, Mr. Landy sets up the world, introduces the protagonists without giving everything away, and hints at the antagonists in his next book beautifully.

At the end of the day, that’s what I want in the first book of a series: an invitation to go on and read the next one.

Until next time,

Al