Im having far too many feelings.

Reread edit that I also have many evil feelings about THE FIGHT. ( )

Skulduggery 6 represents a return to form for Landy, mainly because he shakes things up quite a bit; Tanith and Sanguine are no-shows, other characters are bogged down in bureaucracy and there are quite a number of surprising revelations.

At the end of the previous volume I thought I had worked out quite a bit of what was going to happen next; none of it played out the way I expected, though some of it still might...because the Reflection subplot still hasn't paid off...which is getting a little irritating...I also thought vol. 6 was going to wrap things up; no more Skeleton Detective stories. How wrong can I be? There's already a World Book Day novelette following on from this book...

With Kenspeckle also out of the picture, Landy needed to find another approach to the, "Skulduggery is a bad influence on Valkyrie," voice. This he manages by working it into the story via the protagonists' actions and hidden aspects. This works much better than another lecture by the good doctor would have. In fact Cain behaves pretty unpleasantly in various respects during the course of the book and only retains sympathy because of the previous five books. It's brave on the part of Landy and I applaud it. It's a shame, however, that one of the ways Cain behaves badly is during the Anti-Twilight plot-line. I could have lived without it; it's not even remotely subtle and I certainly don't need a warning about the unwisdom of a teen having a "romance" with a stalker-over-protector-controlling older man... Maybe the target audience (i.e. actual teenagers) do need such a warning but I'd like to think they don't, even if they are rabid Twilight fans. I could tell life and novels apart when I was a teen.

But is this series ever going to end? At least could Landy write something else between Skeleton Detective tomes? I want to believe he has more than one idea. ( )

I knew I'd enjoy this book, but did not at all expect to be so totally blown away. Mr. Landy is not at all resting on his laurels as this series progresses.

This installment, like the rest of the series, has outstanding depth, beautiful character development, and nearly non-stop action. My nephew, who refuses to read anything that doesn't grab and hold his craving for excitement, loves this series almost as much as I do.

I should write to Mr. Landy to thank him for letting me sneak some people and feelings into my nephew's action-packing reading preferences :) ( )

This book was outstanding and quite surprising at times. I was actually much happier with it than the last one, and very much look forward to reading more about what comes next.

I'm not going to give away any spoilers. I'll just say that if you enjoy Derek Landy's writing then you will most likely enjoy this very much and also, if you enjoy his writing you simply must read his blog "Derek Landy Blogs under duress." http://dereklandy.blogspot.com/

Incredibly funny man and excellent writer. ( )

The last quarter of this was good, but otherwise it had horrible pacing problems. It's still an insane festival of gratuitous violence, some of which was pretty scary, but at least she's an exceedingly mature sixteen in this book. She's a far cry from the innocent 12-year-old she was in Book One, and whom I really liked. This book had a few scenes where the humor really succeeded, although most of them fell really flat.

Specific to the audiobook, at least there were no inappropriate American accents this time, but instead we got totally random Eastern European and French accents. It continues to be annoying that Skulduggery is voiced as a slightly Irish Batman.

Still and all, I dig the 'verse and the relationships within it. ( )