Skulduggery Pleasant: the Dying of the Light

I do genuinely love the series.

This was meant to be a book review. It's more of a rant (sorry).

I've been following Derek Landy's Skulduggery Pleasant novel series for about five or six years. I discovered it by being amazed that my younger brother/twin was reading a book, and, becoming intrigued by the skeleton on the front cover, I asked to read it when he was done.

Nine books later, here we are. If you've never heard of it, the Skulduggery Pleasant series is about a skeleton detective and his teenage sidekick/apprentice as they fight to save the world. It's set in Ireland, uses a variety of magic, and the style is incredibly witty and fun.

I was gripped from the first book, when my favourite character nearly died (I was later to learn she had died in an earlier draft). A character known as the strongest man on earth got killed in a later book. And the main character was, as you know by now, an undead skeleton. The novels were gritty even while they were witty (I couldn't resist the rhyme!).

That being said, the final book disappointed me. It maintained the level of humour, action and character dynamics I was used to. Sure, it killed off a lot of my favourite characters without ever giving the hope of bringing them back. Okay, it did ruin the chance of my favourite fictional romance possibility ever. Yes, it marked the end of an era for me and my brother - ending a series we shared, giving us something to talk about it. I could deal with those things, fine.


What I was disappointed with was the book as a whole, not its parts.

It seemed rushed. There's only so long you can drag out a fight before anything that follows will appear hasty. The ending was abrupt and did nothing to bring closure to the world Landy had created. I get that bringing 'closure' isn't realistic, especially on a world that had expanded so much after nine novels but the issue for me wasn't that there was no big talk at the end where everyone discussed their feelings and what they were going to do next, no long walking off into the sunset. It was just left open - so wide open that I felt like it wasn't even an ending, but a cut off point. The main story was over. The characters abandoned.

And don't even get me started on [spoiler alert] Stephanie's dramatic relocation to Canada. Chapters set in the future with Stephanie were sprinkled throughout in a way that was disorientating (couldn't tell what was going on), annoying (distracted from the present day plot line) and somewhat useless (the novel could have done without those extra chapters).

I know that as the last book in the series, it was going to leave a big impact. I just wish the explosion had used a different source.