review: Skulduggery Pleasant #3 The Faceless Ones

by Derek Landy
HarperCollins, 2009
Middle Grade Fantasy

Third book in the SP series, and the marathon continues...

Summary:

Teleporters are the most tricky of all sorcerers. Any sign of trouble, and in the blink of an eye, they could be halfway around the world. Which is why the fact that they're being murdered like flies is extremely disturbing. It should be impossible, for one. It's up to Valkyrie and Skulduggery to solve the mystery. As they realize that the murders are somehow linked to the Faceless Ones, a race of destructive gods, they must race find the leader of the group of powerful sorcerers and stop him before it's too late.

But just who is this mastermind? Powerful enough to kill the one type of sorcerer that was previously thought untouchable?

Thoughts:

The book is another sarcastic and witty installment in this suspenseful series. We see more character development of our main characters, Valkyrie and Skulduggery. The mystery in this one is one of my favourites. THe first two books were close to being similar, but this one adds lots of new elements, from adding the difficulty and raising the stakes to many different settings and many more types of magic.

We get to meet believably creepy necromancers, a haunted house run by a ghost, a sea hag in a lake, and meet the teleporters, a rather secretive and arrogant bunch in general.

The amount of deaths involved in this book got unnerving once you understood that people all over the world were being killed. That was a bit gruesome to get your head around. But it's kind of deliciously gruesome, like Terry Pratchet or Tim Burton.

I know this is a very, very short book review for me, but I think that says how wonderful it was. I couldn't put this book down long enough to write more than a few jot notes, and just had to keep reading this series. But don't worry, I have a very long review for the Maleficent Seven in store!

Rating: 

4.7/5