Skulduggery Pleasant: The Sunday Times bestselling dark fantasy adventure for children aged 11+

by Derek Landy

368 pages, Paperback

Published January 28, 2025

About the author

Derek Landy is an Irish writer and screenwriter. In addition to the bestselling children's/YA series of Skulduggery Pleasant books, a supernatural mystery series starring Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton detective, and Valkyrie Cain, a young female magician, he has written two screenplays that have been made into films: the IFTA award winning "Dead Bodies" and the IFTA nominated "Boy Eats Girl". Landy himself was nominated for an IFTA for Best Script.

He doesn’t like to brag about all the awards he’s won, such as the Irish Book of the Decade, or the Red House in the UK, or all the other awards that he humbly displays on his mantelpiece. He is also far too modest to mention things like the first book being a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year, but would like to extend an invitation to Oprah to pop around one day for tea, in thanks for selecting his book for the Oprah’s Book Club Kids Reading List.

Derek plays too many video games, reads too many comics, and watches too many movies. He lives in Ireland with too many cats. Occasionally he talks to real people, but only when he absolutely has to.

Reviews

[Ellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genuinely one of the best first book of a series I’ve ever read

[Diego Gutierrez · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.0
I liked the humor, but I had two main problems with this book (mild spoilers ahead): 1) free, no-rule magic system. Things just happened when it was convenient, there was no cost to using magic. Skulduggery literally could flick his fingers and send enemies flying. And 2) Skulduggery was simply invincible. He could be tortured, thrown off a cliff, swallowed by a wall... he'd just shrug it off and move on. Also, he happened to have a very convenient immunity against the ultimate weapon, so there goes the tension. Too bad, I really liked to enjoy the series much better. I may read book 2 still, but we'll see.

[Gwynevere Groß · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit hard for me to rate something I have such a strong nostalgic connection to, but goddamn it is just that good. An amazing first entry into a series that - from what I’ve recently learned - apparently has about 15 mainline novels and eight spin-offs? That’s crazy, but I’m excited to get to ALL of them. Yes. I am determined.

[SummeroftheSeasons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magic, humour and a detective duo, what more could I ask for. This took a few of my favourite elements from Sherlock and Discworld but created something totally unique. No better feeling than finding a quality middlegrade/YA read that I can recommend to kids. The perfect palette cleanser. Keen to read much more from this series!

[Goldenwattle · Rating 3 out of 5]

She's only twelve; I had to continuously remind myself of that, as this twelve year old spoke with an adult voice. That niggled me, and did influence what I thought of this story. Likely children will like it though.

[Craiggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a re-read for me; a jump back into something familiar and comforting. And what a pleasant rekindling it was.
This was an excellent return to where this series started, and I am reminded of just how much I enjoyed this series to begin with. A brilliant first book.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fun. It has everything that makes a good story—action, humor, betrayal, magic, a living skeleton, and an evil villain that is set on world domination.

I enjoyed it and plan on reading the rest of the series!

[Alice Leung · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's fast-paced and full of actions. The dialogue is well-written and witty, slightly different from the previous edition though.

[Holly Bale · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book forever will this book took me on a whirl wind of emotions and I will be purchasing the entire series. So worth the read!!