Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant is a whirlwind adventure into the depths of a secret world of magic, ancient evil, and mystery. I picked it up expecting a book targeted to boys (based on the cover art alone) and instead was pleasantly surprised to find the book perfect for girls who like action!
12 year old Stephanie Edgley inherits her eccentric uncle’s estate and fortune, and on her first night alone at the house is attacked and almost killed. She is saved by a man who was both at the funeral and the reading of the will, and who turns out not to be a man at all. Instead, Skulduggery Pleasant is a skeleton, a long dead, although magically alive, magician who was a close friend of her uncle’s. Skulduggery believes Stephanie’s uncle was murdered for a secret he kept, and now he believes Stephanie is in the same danger.
Intrigued by the adventure of this new world, Stephanie plunges headlong into the mayhem and intrigue of an ancient, secret world on the brink of war between ultimate evil and good. She meets many scary and powerful characters and has to figure out quickly that nothing and no one are as they seem. At times she doubts her strength and whether she can survive in this world, but in the end finds that she is wiser, stronger, and much more powerful than she, or anyone else, ever imagined.
Stephanie’s character is smart, wise-cracking, and spunky. She yearns for adventure, challenges, and to get more from her life. She finds a perfect partner in Skulduggery, and their friendship develops throughout the course of the story as Stephanie discovers her true nature. There’s a lot of fast paced action in this book which keeps the story moving and readers racing to the end.
- Posted by Cori