Readers´ Choice Review: Skulduggery Pleasant

SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT

By Derek Landy

Amazon prices: 7 GBP (Paperback)/ 8 USD (Paperback)

As the first review voted by my readers, voted for with an overwhelming three votes (60% of the total vote number), I give you: Skulduggery Pleasant. As you can hopefully see, the picture-pasting problem has been solved, and the cover is now shown above in all its mono-colour magnificence.
Being a magical skeleton detective with a stinging love of sarcasm, the title character of this book is sure to stand out in any street picture. Any street picture where he wants to be noticed, that is.

This book is written by Derek Landy, my third-favourite Irish Fantasy author. It is due to him that I started thinking of Ireland as the most gifted country in the terms of Young Adult fantasy.

Now, you see the character on the front cover? The magic skeleton detective I mentioned before? The character who has so generously shared his name with not only the first book, but the entire series? He´s not the main character; the story revolves around the girl Stephanie, whose life he accidentally disturbs. Despite numerous warnings, Stephanie gets herself employed as his sidekick, and from this, the story evolves.

You´ll know what kind of author we´re dealing with here as soon as you´ve read through the dedications placed in front of the book. This author has an unmistakable talent for sarcasm, irony, catchy punchlines, puns and catchphrases, so if that´s your kind of humour, give these a go.

If not, there still is a fairly enjoyable Fantasy story behind the jokes. But to be fair, that´s all it is. Though Derek Landy´s rethorics are great fun, and though his characters are proving cleverly deviced and his magic spells well invented, the plot is little more than a skeleton (oh yes, pun very much intended) for these parts, which obviously he´s been enjoying about as much as his readers. The book starts pretty much predictably with the protagonist meeting a stranger, being confusedly forced to accept the fact that magic exists, and eventually joining forces with the good magic guys. Then we´re presented to a team of wacky, powerful and entertaining characters who form the good team, and the story works up towards the final confrontation with some manifestation of evil.

And there we have another thing: the final confrontation doesn´t seem quite final enough. It´s being built towards throughout the whole book, then during the last few chapters, Landy seems to concentrate on getting rid of the bad guys as fast as possible so we can get back to the clever insults and disguised compliments.

In the end, we´re left with a story that seems to have been of little else purpose than to make a comfortable setting for the following books, but that´s okay.

But enough of complaints; I feel that I´m only briefly mentioning the good parts about the book, and that´s a terrible thing for me to do, because this book surely isn´t as bad as I make it sound. It might not be a pageturner because of the plot, but there are myriads of other small things to read just another page for – you´ll probably want to read another few chapters to see what funny comments Skulduggery gets to expose his fellow characters to.

THE CONCLUSION:

Are you the target audience for Skulduggery Pleasant?

You might be one of those people who doesn´t read Fantasy. If that´s the case, this isn´t your kind of book. You might be one of the people who read Fantasy because of its distant relation to ancient legends of all kinds. If that´s the case, this isn´t your kind of book. Then again, you might be one of those who read Fantasy because it´s Fantasy. If that´s the case, you should get this.

What you have to keep in mind is that this is infinitely closer to Artemis Fowl than it is to Lord Of The Rings – remembering that, you´ll have pretty much an idea of what audience it is for.

What are, respectively, the best and worst parts of Skulduggery Pleasant?

The best part has to be the way Derek Landy can tell a story. The worst part has to be the fact that I think he could, with the same setting and characters as he used here, have found a better story to tell.

For me specifically, was Skulduggery Pleasant worth buying?

I´d say so. I initially picked up the first four books of the series just to see what it was, and though I´ve only read the first two books by now, I definitely intend to read the others. Then I´ll probably get the fifth, and perhaps the sixth if it´s available at the time. So to put it that way, I don´t regret getting ít at all.