This is a book review of Skulduggery Pleasant: Dark Days by Derek Landy.
Even though I read a book most weeks, it has been a while since I wrote a book review. Well I’ve restarted with an absolute cracker of a book! The Skulduggery Pleasant series might well be aimed at teenagers, but it was a welcome read during an often stressful week.
The Skulduggery Pleasant series is a light hearted fantasy series with evil villains, sorcerers, vampires and of course a skeleton detective, accompanied by a teenage girl, who frankly you wouldn’t want to offend! The skeleton detective is called Skulduggery Pleasant and his sidekick is the teenage girl Valkyrie Cain.
Dark Days entails a plot to save the detective from another dimension, a group of villains out for revenge and a lot of trouble and situations in-between. It is a world full of magic, evil and even some zombies. All sounds a wee bit serious doesn’t it? Derek Landy (the author) manages to juggle serious with wit and humour, and brings it altogether into a story that isn’t dull and keeps a steady pace.
The book primarily focuses around Valkyrie Cain, who not only can psychically fight against evildoers, but also uses magic to aid her combat.
Looking back it is amazing how different situations were covered in the 415 page book, yet it didn’t feel condensed, which is a result of the author’s writing skills.
If you are a Terry Pratchett fan you should be able to settle into the series, and within a few days I had polished off the book. Now I mention the word ‘series’, which frankly might deter those who are just dipping their toe in the water. You can be rest assured that whilst there are aspects of a wider story that proceeded and follow on from this book, you can with ease read this book as a standalone.
Which is just as well, as it appears I’m reading the series out of order! Oops, trust me. I borrowed this edition from the local library as out of the three Skulduggery Pleasant books that were sitting on the shelf, this was the only paperback, compared to the gigantic and heavy hardbacks!
So to wrap up this review, the book is well written, full of action, aimed at teenagers and even though it deals with nasty situations, it doesn’t take itself too serious. Got it? Good.
I’m sure I will read another Skulduggery Pleasant book in the future, and I hope you found this review useful.
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