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Derek Landy – Skulduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light | Review

Title: Skulduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light

Author: Derek Landy

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 605

Rating: 8/10

Derek Landy - Skullduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light

Derek Landy – Skulduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light

Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.

This book messed with my mind, man – at first, I really struggled to get in to it, and I could never tell who was who, whether they were good guys or bad guys or even what they were actually doing. But then I got absorbed, after the first hundred pages or so, and everything got a lot more exciting.

I get the feeling that I would’ve suspended my disbelief a little sooner if I’d read the earlier books in the series, because the author seems to assume that you know a lot about his fictional world, although the occasional exposition that he uses to fill you in on what happened earlier is actually well-handled and subtle enough that you don’t even notice what’s happening.

Which is a good thing, because there’s a lot going on – people dying left, right and centre, and occasionally coming back to life, switching allegiance or doing something else that’s equally surprising. It gets confusing to say the least, although I suspect it’ll be easier to understand it all if you’ve started the series from the beginning.

Derek Landy

And from what I understand, quite a lot of people do just that – when I was reading this at work, one of my colleagues stopped me and asked to take a look at the cover. It turns out that her kids, and her kids’ friends, are obsessed with the Skulduggery Pleasant series, in the same way that my own generation was obsessed with Harry Potter.

In fact, when I first started reading the novel, I did detect the influence of the Harry Potter series, and to begin with I was worried that it might just be a rip-off. It turns out I was wrong – the world of the Skulduggery Pleasant series is completely different, and in places I think it weakens the plot-line. Magic needs some universal laws that must always be obeyed, otherwise it can just be used to explain away gaps in the story, as it was occasionally used here.

But despite that, The Dying of the Light is a pretty compelling read, and once I really got in to it, I did find it hard to put it down. Sure, the barrier to entry is a little high if you haven’t read the other books in the series, but once you get past that, you’ll be interested in the huge collection of characters on offer, and I bet that you’ll find a favourite and settle down with the back catalogue to read about what happened to them before the events of The Dying of the Light kicked off.

Valkyrie Cain

I don’t want to go in to too much detail about the plot, partly because it’s too complicated to go in to and partly because I don’t want to spoil it – suffice to say that if you’re in to magic, fantasy and the fight of good against evil, then you’re going to enjoy it. Hell, I’m not even going to tell you who wins!

The only problem for me, when you consider the target audience of kids and young adults, was the level of gore that the book contains – it seems like every couple of pages, someone’s being beheaded, dismembered or otherwise brutally murdered, even some peripheral characters who the author could’ve left alive. It might bother you if you’re reading it to kids.

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Click here to buy Skulduggery Pleasant: The Dying of the Light.

Paul Durham – The Luck Uglies | Review

Title: The Luck Uglies

Author: Paul Durham

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 430

Rating: 8/10

Paul Durham – The Luck Uglies

Disclaimer: While I aim to be unbiased, I received a copy of this for free to review.

I’ve got to be honest, this is an excellent young adult novel with a strong mix of genres and a focus on fantasy, exactly the sort of book that I wish had been around when I was a kid. Durham’s fictional world is rich in detail, supported by a map at the front of the book, and so immersive that, at times, you feel as though you’re living in the village of Drowning with Rye, Lottie, Abby and Harmless, the leading characters who feel as real as your relatives.

The plot isn’t necessarily complicated, but it’s a bit difficult to go in to with a limited word count – loosely speaking, though, it follows the teenage Rye as she tries to save her village from being attacked by the monstrous Bog Noblins, uncovering the mysteries of the Luck Uglies along the way. The Luck Uglies are a band of ruthless mercenaries who drove the Noblins out of the village ten years earlier, only to have the deal that they made with the town’s ruler revoked. They’re not exactly the type of folk you want to mess with, but as the front cover of the book declares, “sometimes only the bad guys can save you.”

And let’s face it, the characters are bad-ass – Harmless in particular is awesome, although I won’t risk revealing too much about him in case it spoils the story-line. Let’s just say that he carries two swords strapped to his back that he can wield in both hands – that kind of tells you how harmless he really is, right? Rye also makes the perfect protagonist, and her friends are an interesting and eclectic bunch who are easily memorable thanks to their distinct personalities.

The only thing to let the book down is its occasional predictability – some of the plot-lines are easy to anticipate, but perhaps I only feel like that because I read so many books. It’s certainly less likely that a teenager would pick up on them, but it’s still not impossible to guess what’s about to happen. That said, I was happy with how everything turned out, and so even though I saw it coming, I wanted it to happen – it left me with a feeling of accomplishment, almost as though I’d helped to create the story to begin with. I suppose we all do, inside our imagination.