SuhailiSkulduggery Pleasant
February 27th 2008 02:52
Gordon Edgley, the famous horror novelist dies and leaves the vast majority of his estate to his niece Stephanie, a perfectly ordinary twelve year old girl with a higher than average level of intelligence and a healthy disregard for authority.
At the reading of Gordon's will, Stephanie meets a gentleman wearing a very large hat, a tan overcoat and big sunglasses who introduces himself as Skulduggery Pleasant. Stephanie is immediately curious about Skulduggery and he congratulates her when she is given the good news of her inheritance. In the excitement of owning her own home already at age twelve, Stephanie forgets about Skulduggery and turns her attention to exploring the huge house.
Stephanie convinces her parents to let her stay at Gordon's mansion by herself for the night and, once alone for the evening, is promptly attacked by a man who demands she give him "the key".
Skulduggery arrives in time to save her with a combination of a good entrance, a snappy one-liner and liberal hurling of fireballs. In the fight, his disguise comes apart and he is revealed to be a walking, talking, magic wielding skeleton and Stephanie learns that, while Uncle Gordon may have been a horror writer his stories definitely weren't fiction.
The debut novel of Irish playwright Derek Landy and the first in a planned nine book series, Skulduggery Pleasant is hard to categorise - some of the language may intimidate more reluctant readers but the story itself will keep almost anyone turning the pages. The general tone and the many fight sequences could make Skulduggery Pleasant a stereotypical "boys book" but for the fact the main character is a girl.
There are elements of so many different genres in here that you can't even use that as a neat little pigeonhole for the book - horror, fantasy, comedy and mystery are only the main ones that Landy touches on.
The plot is fast without the reader ever needing to backtrack or pause to figure out what's happening now as the characters race from location to location. The cast are vibrant and interesting with names which, simply by virtue of being unusual in the extreme, are almost as attention-grabbing as the characters who bear them - Nefarian Serpine, Sagacious Tome and of course Skulduggery Pleasant himself are just three examples.
Regardless of its almost complete lack of cooperation in being categorised, there is one class that Skulduggery Pleasant fits like a glove and that is "damn good novel". In that capacity alone, I've been recommending it to pretty much everyone regardless of what their usual reading preferences are and I highly recommend that you all at least check it out.
Five out of five stars.
At the reading of Gordon's will, Stephanie meets a gentleman wearing a very large hat, a tan overcoat and big sunglasses who introduces himself as Skulduggery Pleasant. Stephanie is immediately curious about Skulduggery and he congratulates her when she is given the good news of her inheritance. In the excitement of owning her own home already at age twelve, Stephanie forgets about Skulduggery and turns her attention to exploring the huge house.
Stephanie convinces her parents to let her stay at Gordon's mansion by herself for the night and, once alone for the evening, is promptly attacked by a man who demands she give him "the key".
Skulduggery arrives in time to save her with a combination of a good entrance, a snappy one-liner and liberal hurling of fireballs. In the fight, his disguise comes apart and he is revealed to be a walking, talking, magic wielding skeleton and Stephanie learns that, while Uncle Gordon may have been a horror writer his stories definitely weren't fiction.
The debut novel of Irish playwright Derek Landy and the first in a planned nine book series, Skulduggery Pleasant is hard to categorise - some of the language may intimidate more reluctant readers but the story itself will keep almost anyone turning the pages. The general tone and the many fight sequences could make Skulduggery Pleasant a stereotypical "boys book" but for the fact the main character is a girl.
There are elements of so many different genres in here that you can't even use that as a neat little pigeonhole for the book - horror, fantasy, comedy and mystery are only the main ones that Landy touches on.
The plot is fast without the reader ever needing to backtrack or pause to figure out what's happening now as the characters race from location to location. The cast are vibrant and interesting with names which, simply by virtue of being unusual in the extreme, are almost as attention-grabbing as the characters who bear them - Nefarian Serpine, Sagacious Tome and of course Skulduggery Pleasant himself are just three examples.
Regardless of its almost complete lack of cooperation in being categorised, there is one class that Skulduggery Pleasant fits like a glove and that is "damn good novel". In that capacity alone, I've been recommending it to pretty much everyone regardless of what their usual reading preferences are and I highly recommend that you all at least check it out.
Five out of five stars.
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Jon.