Dark Days

Book Title: Dark Days

Author: Derek Landy

Series: Skulduggery Pleasant #4

Date Started: March 25th 2018

Date Completed: March 27th 2018

Genres: Fantasy, Mystery, Adventure, Thriller, Action, Horror

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

Final Rating: Five stars

Review:

Get ready for the darkness to set in, because this is where Skulduggery Pleasant gets grim. For about two minutes and then someone cracks a joke and you have to try not to grin because it's really not appropriate, I mean someone's probably just died horribly. But damnit, those wise cracks are good. This is probably one of the grimmer instalments of the series; despite what happens later on, the characters are still getting used to each other (even four books/years in) so the drama sits a little heavier. It's still a lot of fun. Even if people do die horribly.

I noticed with The Faceless One how the action started to ramp up, and in Dark Days it's the politics that's kicked up a notch. When I was younger I loved it for worldbuilding and I've always been interested in how people interact and run things, but now that I'm older I properly appreciate the amount of skill that goes into that kind of detail. By the way, this book is 8 years old as I write this. Eight. And I understood everything that happens back when I first read it, even if I didn't fully comprehend its implications. These books have complicated worlds, complicated systems, complicated characters, and I understood it. If that isn't high praise for Derek, I don't know what is. (I mean, he's probably not satisfied until you're bowing before him, but hey I've been here for a while Derek, this is what you get.)

I always remember being smug that, having collected the hardbacks up to Mortal Coil without reading them yet (the fate of all my books when I was a kid), when The Faceless Ones ended on its cliffhanger I didn't have to wait a year. I went straight from the last page to the first of this one. And yet, even without that waiting anticipation (both then and now) I still feel my heart rate raising a little bit as Val goes through that portal. I'm also still amazed that they manage to rescue Skulduggery [spoilers, but if you hadn't guessed they get him back in a nine book series where he's the titular character, there's no hope for you] and still have a fully fledged plot in itself. You get a satisfying payoff and a good old-fashioned mystery adventure all rolled into one, not to mention all the clues about where the series is going.

Derek has said that the Skulduggery books are essentially three trilogies, each against a different enemy. First there are the Faceless Ones, from here until the end of Death Bringer it's the Remnants, and then you have Darquesse for the final three. Looking at it from a scriptwriting perspective, the structure is on it to the T; it's so carefully orchestrated and it's only really now going back and reading the series in full that I can see how much Derek had planned from the start. I would never have noticed it on the first reading, but he plants just what you need before you need it, so when something it revealed details fall into place like a puzzle. That's how you write satisfying mysteries and series with tangible payoffs. You scheme like Derek and laugh at your readers' pain. Or, failing that, you learn how to plan ahead.

It's even in the characters. There's foreshadowing sprinkled everywhere; from their abilities to what their fates will be. Again, from a theory perspective, but knowing what your characters' motivations and wants make them so much more developed and real. Their arcs are maintained, and there's tension. They don't just conveniently have feelings or reactions as they go on, they're built on hard action and events. So much of the time you get authors who know what story they want, but can't make their characters match up. Which implies that they don't fit together in the first place. You also get used to having one character, or one relationship dominate the story, whether it fits with logic or not. Not here. Skulduggery and Val are the main duo, sure, but we follow other people and other stories in between the main plotline. There are other forces that influence the progress of the story.

And Valkyrie has tangible connections with people other than her partner in crime: Tanith, Fletcher, Ghastly, Wreath, China, not to mention the unique dynamics between recurring villains, new villains, the various Sanctuary agents that have varying degrees of dislike for her. Oh yeah, and Val can be dislikeable. She can be incredibly loveable too, and you root for her, but she's not a polite, perfect, even necessarily sociable human being. she's a real person and sometimes she's rude or makes bad choices or puts herself before others. Guess what, people (and, shock horror, women) do that. They aren't always likeable. They can still be developed characters, and you can still root for them.

What can I say that I haven't already gushed about in every review? I loved it, as always. I could sit down for a week and read all of them one after another, but alas I have to be a functioning adult. It's a shame, really.