Review: Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

This is another book that I picked up to read ahead of #yalc. I've seen the eponymous hero grinning at me from the cover in the school library for years, and never once felt the urge to pick him up. I don't know why, maybe the graffiti font or the garish colours made me think this was a book for boys who needed bright colours and grinning skeletons to make them pick up a book. Oh how wrong I was!

Firstly, Skulduggery isn't really the hero. Granted, cheating death and surviving as a living skeleton detective with awesome combat and magic skills is pretty heroic, but wait until you meet Stephanie. She's just a teenage girl, chilling out alone in the house that her dead uncle bequeathed her, when she gets thrown into a secret world of magic and ...erm... Skulduggery! The end of the second chapter had my heart racing, and I've already used it as a good example of storytelling with a student I'm tutoring.

As Stephanie is just learning about this new world and trying to figure out how she fits into it, she doesn't  play too much of a part in the numerous action scenes, and does end up being rescued by Skulduggery and his allies on several occasions. What she does have in abundance though, is determination. Despite many characters warning her off the path she has chosen, she is committed to discovering who murdered her uncle and helping Skulduggery to prevent his arch-nemesis from awakening an ancient evil. There's a small part of me that cheers every time Stephanie does something badass in the book - this is a girl that boys enjoy reading about. I'm so unimpressed with the stories in the recent press, such as this one in The Times, about men and boys not being able to read books written by or about females, or deemed to be good by females. Stephanie would kick Frankie's Magic Football right where it hurts! (Don't even get me started on footballers writing books for children...)

The grimace suggests that, perhaps, she already has.

I devoured this book. The fast-paced action, the snarky dialogue and colourful characters made it a real pleasure to read. It's definitely a good book to hook a reluctant reader, as the gripping story and short chapters make it really accessible, but there's also lots in there for more accomplished readers - references to other stories and myths, and Landy is clearly a lover of language - the names of his characters are perfect. For adults who are interested in a bit of YA fiction, if you like Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, you will probably like this.

Why not the full five stars? At the novel's climax, the brilliant dialogue and description was definitely playing second fiddle to the epic fight, and Landy's subtleties that I'd appreciated earlier on became somewhat lost. However, once I have finished my mission to read as many of the authors attending YALC, I will definitely be picking up the rest of this series, as I think this is going to be one awesome adventure!