Bedlam: a scene of uproar and confusion, an apt title

The 12th book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, an awkward one to talk about! This is going to be a spoiler free review, for the whole series as well as this individual book, just in case people who’ve read none or some of the previous books want to read this. I gave this book 5* unsurprisingly and really loved it.

For those uninitiated, the Skulduggery Pleasant series starts off following a tweenager called Stephanie after her Uncles funeral, a skeleton detective called Skulduggery Pleasant and revolves around magic in Ireland, hidden from the mortals. It’s an 8-12 book (Middle Grade for my North American audience), but is surprisingly violent so don’t expect it to be wishy-washy just cause it’s aimed at kids.

Book #9 was the end of the first part of this series, with a cover and tone change from then onwards. In book #10 we come back after Stephanie has been away for a few years (the least spoilery way I could write it!) and the series continues on from there. Now we’re up to book #12.

As always, this was a fast paced, high action, banter filled read that was a pleasure to pick up. We hop around various different viewpoints in order to best see all of the action and in each one of them Landy’s humour shines through, which is really a standout feature of this series. This book probably had one of the least amounts of Skulduggery featured, as well as having a very fast paced and multi-faceted action plot, so as far as I can tell from the less excited reviews on Goodreads these may be reasons that the latest book isn’t your favourite. But personally I was still highly invested, still enjoying myself and still highly anticipating reading the newly released Seasons of War!

If you’ve never read a Skulduggery Pleasant book I really do recommend giving them a go! I’ve never listened to the audiobooks myself but they’re narrated by an Irishman, lending authenticity to those unused to the accent, and you can listen to the whole first audiobook for free here!! (at least at the time of writing) so do you really have an excuse not to give this series a go?