Skulduggery Pleasant - Book 4: Dark Days by Derek Landy

It's the fourth Skulduggery Pleasant adventure! only Skulduggery Pleasant himself is lost on the other side of a portal, with only some evil gods for company. Can he possible survive? (Yes, all right, he's already dead. But still.) What can we say, without giving too much away? Not much, is the answer. But what we CAN say is that this book is hilarious, it's tense, and it's packed with all the eye-popping action, crackling one liners and imaginative set pieces you've come to expect. There's a new threat to our plucky heroine, of course. But that's not all. There's also the little fact of the Big Bad, the uber-baddy who's going to come along and really, really destroy the world. (Really.) And what we learn about that villain in this book will literally make your jaw fall off and your hair go white with shock. (Not really.) Will Skulduggery make it out of the Faceless Ones' dimension? Who knows. The problem is, he may not have much to come back to!

If I was making a list of my current favourite series you would definitely find Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy. There is just something about a skeleton main character that intrigued me since book one and hopefully will for as long as the series is published. I keep going to say things and then remembering that if you haven't read any of the other books in the series it is a spoiler... It is hard to review books from a series. I can safely say that this is the funnest group of characters I have encountered in a while. They are all over the place for personality and it all just works. Skulduggery is still why I read the series, but the other characters are growing on me. I just don't think I would have been interested in this series in the first place if it wasn't about a skeleton. Nothing else is necessarily all that original, so I was happy that Landy found a fresh idea.

I really like the combination of action and humour in this series. You get on the edge of your seat and then something entirely off the wall happens and you wind up laughing aloud and hoping that there is no one around who will think you are crazy. If you are crazy, though, then you would fit right in with this series! So, maybe it is okay if people catch you randomly laughing. Landy is also capable of keeping the sub-plots going. Even if you think it is minor, he mentions it and develops it in someway. I hate when authors forget about their own subplots and then you get to the end of the book and still don't entirely know what happened. I have high hopes that by the time this series comes to an end everything will be addressed, if not entirely wrapped-up. This series doesn't really struck me as the type where everything can be resolved in a neat little package when the finally book is reached.

So, since there are a lot of people that read this blog that STILL haven't discovered the wonder that is Skulduggery, I am just going to say that this was another great book and you really must read it! Then, there is the fears that I am crazy and no one will understand my love attraction to this series, but that is the price you pay when people are slacking off and missing out on greatness. Okay, maybe I wouldn't go quite that far, but you still should give this series a try and be very excited that book five will be out next month!

Thanks to Harper Collins for once again supplying me with a copy! (Did I mention you really should try this series?)

This book counts for the RIP Challenge, but I haven't officially signed up yet. Must do that!