Derek Landy has delivered on the next book for Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain and has done so with his usual perfect mix of humour, wit and flair for twists that has kept his fans riveted since his first release, all as the story progresses closer to midnight. I would recommend this book and this author, who always continues to deliver outstanding work

As every Skulduggery Pleasant super fan would know, Derek Landy has never failed to give a gripping book and that doesn't stop here. Tied with Skulduggery pleasant Death Bringer, this book is my favorite of the series. Some chapters of the book scared me so much, I thought my Heart leaped into my throat! The imagination of this book is so wild! it reminds me of the Wonderscape by Jenifer Bell except it's more macabre and gruesome! I give this book 4 stars because the book was so brilliant that when the very ending of the book came it was, just slightly, underwhelming. But apart from that i would definatly recommend this thriller/ mystery/ action novel. Enjoy reading!

It’s 6 months after SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT - RESURRECTION. 14-year-old Omen Darkly thought that his association with Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain would lead to further adventure and had been eagerly waiting their call until he reluctantly realised that it wasn’t going to come. Instead he stays on the sidelines, watching his brother Auger go on adventures as he prepares for his battle with the King of the Darklands and works up the courage to ask out Axelia Lukt. When a portal opens to another dimension, sending through a flood of mortal refugees, he sees it as a chance to develop an outside interest that will make a difference and volunteers to join Miss Gnosis’s effort to provide them with blankets and food. Skulduggery and Valkyrie are looking for leads on where the recently resurrected Abyssinia has gone and discover that she’s looking for her son, Caisson, who’s been subjected to medical experiments for at least 60 years. Valkyrie is also trying to reconnect with her family as she works to get past the guilt and emotional trauma she’s been dealing with for 7 years and her parents persuade her to babysit her sister Alice for the night so that they can go out. Unfortunately, the investigation intrudes on her plans for the night, which means she needs a babysitter to look after Alice for a few hours and she knows just the person to call ... But Abyssinia’s search has alienated some of her most faithful followers and one sees a chance to get revenge on both her and Valkyrie. When Alice is kidnapped, Valkyrie (tagging along a mortified Omen) is set a number of challenges that she has to complete by midnight if she’s to get her sister back ... The 11th in Derek Landy’s SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT SERIES is another fast-paced, funny YA fantasy novel that sees Valkyrie trying to recover from her emotional and mental trauma and reconnect with her sister. However Omen has little to do other than advance backstory while the plot doesn’t do much to advance the over-arching storyline so although there’s a resolution for one of Cain and Pleasant’s enemies, the book does have a filler feel to it. There is a lot to enjoy in this book. Landy’s one of the wittiest YA authors out there and there’s a lot of funny dialogue in this book - especially between Valkyrie and Skulduggery whose chemistry is as good as ever. I really like what Landy’s doing with Valkyrie in this series - a recurrent theme is how being magical and going on adventures can damage your mental and physical health and I enjoy how he echoes this through Omen’s relationship with Auger and how it affects how he views Valkyrie and Skulduggery. I have to say that I’m less fond of the relationship between Omen and Never, mainly because Never’s dialogue always seems a bit self-consciously forced for me but also because I read Never as using Omen so she can get involved in Auger’s adventures. To be fair, this does get addressed within the book but it all reinforces how Omen can be a bit of a doormat and that’s not helped here by the fact that he’s largely used as a plot point for Alice’s kidnap and to help introduce some new backstory (namely the opening of the portal and accompanying mortal refugee crisis), which I can see threatening to build up tensions within Roarhaven. Other backstory developments such as China’s deal with Damocles Creed, Sebastian Tao’s quest to bring back Darquesse and President Flanery’s knowledge of the magical world are all interesting (and I did cheer an old character’s appearance) but little more than scenes and with Landy playing his cards close to his chest and no revelations about Abyssinia’s ultimate plan beyond getting her son back, it’s difficult to get any sense of how they’re going to play out, which is frustrating. Because of all this, the main plot of the book come down to Cadaverous Gant and while I’ve always liked him as an antagonist due to his history with Valkyrie (which goes back to the first series) and his growing disillusionment with Abyssinia, the actual storyline here is pretty thin (as emphasised by how Landy shows Skulduggery getting to the same place as Valkyrie without having to do a load of tasks first). That said, there’s a lot of action and fun had on the journey (especially the Wild Hunt, which I’m hoping will crop up again) and Landy provides more background on Gant’s background and psychology but the ending here, let’s face it, is never in doubt so there isn’t that sense of danger that it needs. This leads me to one of my big worries about this series: there are so many plot lines that I’m concerned they won’t all be closed out satisfactorily. I have a lot of faith in Landy as a writer - for me, he is one of the best in the YA field - but there’s a huge cast of characters in this book to the extent that I lost track of who some of them were and what had happened to them and needed to consult a wikipedia to refresh my memory. If this sounds like I didn’t rate the book, then rest assured that this is definitely not the case. While I didn’t think this was as strong as SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT - RESURRECTION it’s still a very entertaining read and I definitely want to check out the next one.

Eleventh book in a series of witty adventures starring a sassy magical skeleton detective, Skulduggery Pleasant, and his equally sassy magical protégé turned partner, Valkyrie Cain, who take down people with questionable morals. A worthwhile addition to the rest of the series, however this book fell a little flat, the previously intended main antagonist sent to the sidelines with bland characterization that made me less interested in following her story, and as such with this book, it feels like the series has started to drag out for the sake of dragging it out. So in this case, I'm rating it four stars. I look forward to seeing if the series picks up a bit next book.

There's one word in particular that springs to mind after my reading of Derek Landy's Midnight: disjointed. I can barely remember what happened during the first half of this book. I vaguely remember something about refugees coming over from the Leibniz Universe (why is it called that again?), China Sorrows pulling a Cersei Lanister by granting ill-advised powers to the Church, and a mask-wearing weirdo from SPX running around with Tanith Low trying to bring back Darquesse but... the significance of all this? I honestly couldn't tell you. I expect it'll be covered off in later books, but for the time being, these barely-there storylines were dropped halfway through this book in favour of the "Let's save Alice" storyline mentioned on the blurb. More fool me for thinking the two halves might intertwine or be related in someway... Anyway. Completely irrelevant and, dare I say it, boring first half aside, the second half of this book was great. I got serious Demon Road vibes while reading Valkyrie's race against time to save her sister, encountering one horror trope after another. It's fun! And hilarious. And genuinely thrilling -- I found the Wild Hunt segment particularly amusing. Less thrilling was the inclusion of about several hundred POVs that weren't Valkyrie's. I mean, I get it. I understand that Skulduggery doesn't have a POV, and because he and Valkyrie are seperated (again), we need to go through Temple. But Temple is such a non character -- I honestly couldn't care less what happens to him, and reading from his POV just made me miss reading from Valkyrie's instead. Why couldn't we have found a way for Omen to be with Skulduggery so we could see things from Omen's POV? Omen was barely in this book despite essentially being the protagonist of SPX. And again -- this ties back to the tedious first half -- what is the point of Sebastian? In the afterword accompanying my edition of this book, Derek Landy mentions how the "Let's Save Alice" plotline was originally intended for Book 12, and Flannery originally had a greater part to play in the second half of Book 11. That he struggled to make the plot of Book 11 work, and was ultimately abandoned due to actions by Flannery's real-world counterpart, Donald Trump. Exactly what or how it was affected is not disclosed. Regardless, despite Landy's best efforts, this does read like a book of two halves. I'm immensely disappointed with it.