Mortal Coil
The Skulduggery Pleasant series, Book 5
Derek Landy
HarperCollins
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy/Horror/Humor/Mystery
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Since becoming skeleton detective Skulduggery Pleasant's apprentice and partner, Stephanie - now Valkyrie Cain - has kept very few secrets from him... but this time, she has a very good reason. Ever since realizing that she herself is the ill-omened Darquesse, destined (or so the psychics insist) to destroy the world, she has been searching on her own for a way to change the future. Surely she would never do such terrible things on her own, so someone must gain control of her true name. Thus, she hatches a dangerous plan to seal that name so that nobody can turn it against her - only realizing how far in over her head she has wandered when it's too late.
As she's coping with that, the fallout of the destruction of Dublin's Sanctuary, the ruling body of Ireland's hidden magical community, continues to resonate through the country. Tracking down the perpetrator brings them no closer to figuring out who was behind it; the attack was too big and well orchestrated to be the work of one rogue mage. Now a foreign assassin known as the Tesseract is methodically and ruthlessly cleaning up loose ends before any of those threads lead back to the real culprit... culprits who may well already be infiltrating the new Council of Elders as Dublin's sorcerers regroup. When dark Remnants - malevolent shadow spirits that infest the living like parasites - are unleashed by the secretive necromancers, Dublin's magical community may finally be destroyed for good - and, against all of Valkyrie's will and sacrifices and efforts to the contrary, Darquesse may be unleashed.
REVIEW: After a slightly rushed fourth installment, the series returns to form here, beginning a new and darker journey for Valkyrie, Skulduggery, and their associates... one that will change everything going forward, making enemies of friends and leaving more than one dead.
After learning of her foreseen destiny as Darquesse, Valkyrie tries her hand at solo problem solving, erroneously believing that her previous adventures, not to mention the initiative that drove her to do the near-impossible and rescue Skulduggery from the dimension of the banished Faceless Ones, mean she's up to tackling any magical problem that comes her way. (She also, naturally, is not sure what her other magical companions would do if they learned the truth, given how ruthless sorcerers can be when facing threats less extreme than this.) The bargain she strikes to seal her name takes the series well and truly into horror territory, showing just how far she's come from the relatively innocent girl who never suspected the truth about magic. She's also 16 now, and dating, which marks another transition as the series leaves behind any lingering traces of middle grade territory (which were already ghostly thin in the previous installment) to enter young adult territory. Her boyfriend Fletcher may technically be a couple years older, but he's still rather boyish and awkward in relationships... and the outcast vampire Caelan makes no secret of his own growing attraction/obsession, which Valkyrie does not intentionally encourage even as she can't help but be a bit intrigued despite herself. Fortunately, she has friends to help keep her grounded, though given the secrets she's hiding she spends less time around them than she probably should at this stage in her magical training and overall life circumstances. (The fact that she'll soon have a baby sibling yet she's still over-reliant on her mirror reflection stand-in - which has become unusually outspoken for what's supposed to be an unthinking construct - shows just how much she's disappearing into the magical world and the loner role of "Valkyrie Cain", leaving the ordinary life of "Stephanie" behind, for all that she keeps insisting that she's excited to be a big sister and misses ordinary family time.) Without spoilers, the Valkyrie at the end of the book is a much different young woman than the one at the start, having done a lot of growing up and endured some very hard knocks and harsh lessons along the way... but, then, the entire Dublin magical community is not the same by the end, either.
As for the main arc, after the necromancers inadvertently trigger the release of the captured Remnants, things take a very, very dark and dangerous turn. They fixate on Darquesse as their future leader and messiah, someone who will give them the world of death and chaos they've always craved, and they're more than willing to destroy Dublin to get it, spreading like a dark plague through magical and mortal worlds alike. Skulduggery and company have their work cut out for them as they race to keep ahead of the danger... then race to try to find and reactivate the magical Soul-Catcher device that was used to trap them the last time they were unleashed, assuming the mechanism is still functional after so many decades of neglect. Through the influence of the Remnants, friends become foes in the blink of an eye; with the exception of Skulduggery, who is already dead, nobody can be trusted. This makes for some strange bedfellows by the time the climax rolls around, and some very interesting developments.
As in previous installments, there's little down time and no shortage of surprises, as well as sprinklings of humor throughout. Also as in previous segments, the end does not undo nearly all the damage wrought during the story, leaving things very different than where they began. I'm looking forward to seeing where things go from here.
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