Mortal Coil

The fifth book of the series, Mortal Coil will not disappoint fans of Skulduggery Pleasant. The book is action-packed, and I found that there were many chapters that demanded I read the next chapter. I enjoyed the nods to Monty Python and The Princess Bride that were cleverly woven into the story, the dialogue is as witty as ever, and the characters, both old and new, are well written. Mr Landy ties up some loose ends from book four while creating new havoc for Skulduggery and Valkyrie to face. This book also finds Valkyrie facing some very normal (boy trouble) and not-so-normal (cheating destiny) issues. All in all, this book is a nail-biting, edge of your seat page turner with its fair share of scenes worthy of Tim Burton animation. I show more admit that I denied the book a full five stars for a purely selfish reason--the ending. It left me wishing Mr Landy would write faster so I can find out what happens next. show less

I do love this series. Another reviewer has called it underrated, and I totally agree. There's humor, plenty of humor, excellent characters with actual depth, plenty going on, lots of action for those who love action sequences. I am not one of those, and still I love this series. Highly recommended for an older middle-grade reader, mainly because there's a lot of gore. And death. Or for an adult. Such as myself.

Gah. So much explicit gratuitous violence and gore. The series started out as a fun kid's book, but this book mostly just made me queasy. Disability tag for the evil bad guy using a cane and the elderly man getting killed; meanwhile, everyone else who gets critically injured on every third page is magicked better (literally). Also, there's criminal assault happening in front of normal people (i.e. muggles) and only the ostensibly stupid girls thinking it at all *bad*.

Also, if you took out all the narrating of the martial arts, the book would be half its present length. Previous books in the series involved a lot more investigation and talking and a lot less fight scene porn. (I never read Fight Club, but I wonder if there are show more similarities there. I mean, this book has fight scenes like erotic novels have an overabundance of sex scenes.)

But, honestly, do we need to see a 16-year-old girl magically punch a guy's brain out of his head? Really? /o

Book 6 is due out sometime this year and I wonder if it'll pull back on the violence any, or if it'll go full bore End of the World. Still, some of the other plot threads have me hooked, so I guess I'll read it eventually, just to find out how it goes. show less

In preparation for writing this review I have just looked back at what I wrote about Dark Days, the previous book in this hugely entertaining series. At the time I really struggled to write a detailed review that did not contain any spoilers, and I'm now having that Groundhog Day feeling. Please do not feel let down if this review is not as detailed as some of my others but given the recent backlash on blogs and Twitter about certain nasty reviewers peppering their [b:Mockingjay|7260188|Mockingjay (Hunger Games, #3)|Suzanne Collins|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1282388315s/7260188.jpg|8812783] reviews with spoilers I want to be extra careful with this.

This is the thickest Skulduggery Pleasant book so far, weighing in at a hefty 572 show more pages; Derek Landy has obviously been on something of a writing roll given that Dark Days was released a mere five months ago. I enjoyed Dark Days but I had some reservations about how certain villains could have been developed more and a couple of the scenes seemed slightly superfluous. You will be glad to hear that I have no such criticisms about this book at all - I loved it and I think it has possibly become one of my favourite of the series so far.

Dark Days ended with less of a cliffhanger than its predecessor The Faceless Ones, although the final revelation about Darquesse was more than enough to get Skulduggery fans speculating wildly on fan forums and Facebook. Mortal Coil will not answer all of the questions that have been asked over the last five months, but the plot does have a number of deeply pleasing revelations. However, at the same time it also creates even more questions regarding Valkyrie, Darquesse et al so expect those forums to be buzzing noisily over the next few months as well.

The plot of Dark Days relied partly on the villains' use of a Remnant - a body-snatching wraith-like entity that can take over and use a human body without others realising. In Mortal Coil the Remnants play much more than a cameo role - the plot very much focuses on these creatures as they are released from their prison in the Midnight Hotel with devastating consequences for our team of heroes and the local 'normal' population. Yes.... people die in this book (and not just nameless mortals either), and sometimes pretty nastily, although Derek Landy rarely resorts to giving us graphic descriptions of this as he much prefers his readers to use their imaginations to fill in all the gory details. However, there is one wonderful scene where Valkyrie takes herself off to be 'treated' (any other word would give too much away) and the description of her experience is certainly not for the faint hearted!

Much of this book focuses on how Valkyrie is coming to terms with the revelations at the end of Dark Days, especially with regards to issues of trust. In her mind, despite being very close to Skulduggery, Tanith, Fletcher and the others, she is really not sure she trusts any of them enough to help her in this case. This leads to her putting her life in mortal peril, without any of them aware, and then, just as she feels she is able to confide a little more in her friends along come the Remnants and suddenly no-one knows who can they trust. Once the Remnants appear en masse the reader is kept guessing for the rest of the book as to just who has, or hasn't, been taken over and Derek Landy treats us to more nail biting scene after nail biting scene, some of which had me completely stumped as to how our heroes would escape death, or something worse, and as for the final climactic scene....... you will just have to read it for yourself, but I have a very strong feeling it will shock you. show less

i was going to give this book 4 stars...but by the end of it, i was so upset by the turn of events in the story, i decided to give another half star...i think a series that's able to disturb and stir you after 4 books deserves an extra half star :) dont wanna spoil what got me upset tho...

i must say...i will be sad when this series ends. its not Harry Potter, but they're currently my favorite young-adult-though-totally-adult-friendly books at the moment :) i dare say...i enjoyed it more than twilight or the hunger games (and i quite enjoyed those).

Such fun!

Action-packed adventure full of magic and thrills and heroic battling against the forces of evil armed only with swords, balls of fire, elemental magic, bones, and razor-sharp wit. A fun ride, well-written, inventive and funny. Terrific names, too.

Still a great series, but it's getting bleak. It feels like any victories are tiny and all the bad is extra bad. And have I mentioned how this totally doesn't belong in the J area at our library? Because: GORE. So much of the gore. Great Halloween read, actually.