Death Bringer
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 6
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: When the girl Stephanie Edgley - known among the hidden magical community of Dublin as Valkyrie Cain - turned from Elemental magic to Necromancy to help her rescue her mentor and friend Skulduggery Pleasant from an evil dimension of monstrous elder gods, she discovered an unexpected affinity for the dark arts... and inspired hopes in her tutor, Solomon Wreath, that she might become the prophesied Death Bringer. In the most secret and sacred lore of the Necromancers, the Death Bringer is a mage so powerful they can initiate the Passage, which will remake the eternal cycle of life and death and bring a new, harmonious order to the world - whether the world wants it or not. But now Melancholia St. Clair, student of the scheming Necromancer Vandameer Craven, instead appears to have fulfilled that promise. While that lets Valkyrie off the hook of a destiny she did not want, it sets her and Skulduggery once more at odds with the Necromancers as the cult's wildest, darkest dream appears on the verge of coming true, bringing the potential for yet another apocalyptic event. Can the girl and the living skeleton save the world yet again - and will their partnership survive what they discover along the way?
REVIEW: Six books in, and the Skulduggery Pleasant series continues to engage and entertain in a fast-paced, twist-filled installment, with characters who grow and change (not always for the better; magic and world-saving both require sacrifices and secrets that come back to bite people at the worst possible times) and great dialog.
As things begin, Valkyrie is enjoying some family time as "Stephanie" while attending her baby sister Alison's christening. Much as she loves the little girl and her parents, though, inevitably the magical world always comes first - especially when that world has painted a target on her back, though it's quite clear by now that, even if she didn't have active enemies, she'd still default to Valkyrie over Stephanie given half a chance. The mundane world is just too dull for her... as is, unfortunately, her good-guy boyfriend, the teleporter Fletcher. Even knowing the potential depths of her inner dark self - Darquesse, whom more than one seer predicts will destroy the world someday - she can't help craving the excitement and danger of magic. This flaw shapes much of her journey through the book, leading to various unintended consequences for herself and those around her... especially when combined with a bombshell secret from Skulduggery's past. As the threat of the Death Bringer and other challenges arise, Valkyrie and Skulduggery once more find their bond and their powers tested to the utmost and sometimes bested. The action is intense, the violence increasingly brutal (especially violence dealt out by Valkyrie herself; this is not at all the same innocent kid from the first volume, for all that she clearly still has a lot more growing and learning to do), the stakes ratcheting ever-higher on both personal and world-shaping levels, and by the end nothing is left unchanged. Along the way, various series elements get more development, such as the increasing (and somewhat disturbing) independence of Valkyrie's Reflection double, the down-but-not-out remnants of the cult of the Faceless Ones, the continuing exploits of the would-be "killer supreme" and "zombie king" Vaurien Scapegrace and his useless toady Thrasher, and more. Valkyrie also must cope with both her first breakup with her first boyfriend and the ongoing and increasingly-disturbed attentions of the vampire Caelen, who insists they are "destined" for each other. (Her complaints about Caelen's broody, goth brand of "love" nearly had me snickering out loud at work - as did several other witty exchanges. Landy excels at sharp banter that manages not to overstay its welcome in any given scene.) A running subplot about a journalist stumbling onto the truth about the hidden magical community establishes a threat for future installments, which I hope to get to soon.
My only minor complaints are a hint of "series sprawl" - so many characters and subplots that it can take a bit to catch up mentally on who and where and what everyone is and how they fit in - and the final battle feeling just slightly overlong, but those hardly count against the rest of the story, which remains as satisfying as ever.
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Skulduggery Pleasant (Derek Landy) - My Review
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