Skulduggery Pleasant: Audio Collection Books 1-3: The Faceless Ones Trilogy

Skulduggery Pleasant, Playing with Fire, The Faceless Ones

By: Derek Landy

Narrated by: Rupert Degas

Length: 21 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Books 1, 2 and 3 in the SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT series – known collectively as THE FACELESS ONES TRILOGY, Derek Landy's fantastically imaginative series about our favourite dead detective.

SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT
Stephanie's uncle, Gordon, is a writer of horror fiction. But when he dies and leaves her his estate, Stephanie learns that while he may have written horror, it certainly wasn't fiction.

PLAYING WITH FIRE
With Serpine dead, the world is safe once more. At least, that’s what Valkyrie and Skulduggery think, until the notorious Baron Vengeous makes a bloody escape from prison, and dead bodies and vampires start showing up all over Ireland.

THE FACELESS ONES
Skulduggery Pleasant and his wonderfully cheeky and inquisitive side kick, Valkyrie, take us through another journey, which promises to be filled with adventure, dark, mysterious meetings, and classically funny moments.

©2020 Derek Landy (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Progressive improvement

Anything Dugas voices automatically gets to have maximum scores on narration, it's just how the man is, he is a whole orchestra of voices; I am terribly afraid of not liking the rest of the books just by him not being around to voice them.

Now, that however seems to be unlikely, as the books themselves seem much better than meets the eyes. Sure, it's urban contemporary fantasy with a hidden world of magic (a genre already well populated and in fact dominated by certain other works) but it is more than just the sums of it parts, and each of those parts are really good. There is some subtle storytelling and character progression that I extremely enjoyed noticing, it feels rewarding to be a book you pay attention to, while being rewarding to boot. It's quite pulpy, with more spikes of action than slow paced moments of intrigue that suit the genre well, but not to the extent that it would tiresome - I judt wish I had more quiet moments with all the characters, because I actually enjoy them enough to want more of them in my life. I am looking forward to the next trilogy, which I think says enough.