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Author: Derek Landy

Publisher: HarperCollins

ISBN: 0-06-123115-0

I’ve read many books that are so good I wanted to live in their pages and walk with their characters. But not until page 40 of Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant have I ever wished a talking skeleton would burst into my living room and start throwing fire at bad guys.

This is the tale of a bored and under-challenged preteen named Stephanie Edgley, who inherits the mansion (and an exceedingly eccentric friend) of her wealthy, reclusive dead uncle. Stephanie is soon caught up in her uncle’s secret legacy, finding herself square in the path of a vicious sorcerer who’s on a quest to unleash a long-buried scourge of evil on the planet. She plunges headlong into a magical realm of beauty and vice that crouches beneath the veneer of the world she knew. And leading the way is the suit-wearing, pistol-packing, skeletal detective Skulduggery Pleasant, who I daresay is destined to become one of the most beloved protagonists of fantasy fiction.

Skulduggery is everything we want in a hero—minus skin and hair. He is disarmingly charming and impeccably dressed, he summons fire with a click of his phalanges, and he drives a 1954 Bentley R-Type Continental. But in his dogged pursuit of his sadistic archenemy, we glimpse a conflicted and heart-wrenching past that brings surprising realism to this fundamentally human figure. He’s a skeleton, yes—but believable.

Rare is the author who can patch humor and horror seamlessly into the same scene, but with this, his first youth novel, Landy emerges as a master of his craft. He conjures up chilling scenes of vampires and torture chambers that Stephen King himself would find respectable, then spins the mood with bizarrely but undeniably funny quips even as the characters who say them are facing grisly brushes with death. I find it hard to assign this story to any one genre, so smoothly does Landy blur the boundaries. It would be equally at home on the fantasy and comedy shelves—for kids and adults alike.

The book’s recommended reading age is listed as 10 and up, which at first glance struck me as a bit on the young side—there are shootings, torture sessions, beheadings, and screams of agony, and one of the main characters takes an ax through the chest. But so deftly is humor woven into each scene that I personally found it hard to take the violence too seriously. Landy’s subtle comedy keeps the plot light on its feet. The book sacrifices nothing in suspense, but somehow, almost every page is downright funny.

Nor can I say there is an age when a reader might outgrow Skulduggery Pleasant. The plot is youthful, but the characters embody all the conflicts, romantic heroism, and unanswered soul-searching mature readers look for in stories.

Skulduggery Pleasant is an unreserved, supremely gratifying adventure. If there is a Derek Landy fan club, I want in.

The above review was contributed by: Jennifer MacKay: Jenny has published hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. She is also a journals copy editor for Sage Publications and does independent consulting as a developmental book editor. Her chief writing and editing interests are in the juvenile market.