Skulduggery Pleasant: Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 1

I had a few odd looks from my family as I burst out laughing while listening to this book.
Rupert Degas has a brilliant voice that brought all the characters uniquely to life.
Thoroughly enjoyable!

Yes I do. Having all the characters played out with individual voices make the story come alive .

My favourite part was all the witty one liners, they were very funny and I did laugh listening to them. The arguments between Skullduggery and Stephanie were also hilarious.

He was excellent. His voice was perfect for Skullduggery.. It had the right amount of sarcasm and experience.. It was easy to imagine him as the older wiser person in their friendship. His voice could be very creepy at times which set the scene on more then one occasion. At other times his voice was very droll. Perfect for who he was playing. I was not sure at the beginning if I would like a man reading the parts of Stephanie but it really worked!, he was great at it.After a while I forgot that it was a man reading female voices.

It made me laugh. The banter between the two main characters was played out very well and I would easily buy more books in the series just from listening to this book.

A wonderful series for the young or the young at heart who like adventure and bad guys that get what is coming to them.

The characters, storyline and narration kept me listening and entertained!

The constant complications and resolutions kept me engaged and fascinated.

Rupert's ability to adopt and adapt the various characters' voices was sensational and gripping. What a terrific narrator. Really made the story for me.!

The meeting of Skulduggery and the key character at the outset will remain a powerful one for me.

Best ever audio book I've listened to thus far.

So I am a bit of a fan of teenage fiction but the genre can be a bit of a risk. I had looked at this series of books in the stores for a long time and have been tempted but not purchased one. Then I listened to a preview of this on Audible.com ~~ well I was "sold" instantly. Rupert Degas has done one of the best narration jobs I have ever heard. The way he has bought the characters to life is nothing short of amazing. Rupert will always be the voice of Skulduggery for me now and I am glad of that.

The story is fast paced and captivating. The action at times is non-stop and it is hard to "put it down" or in the case of an audiobook "turn it off". There is a couple of common fantasy themes as mentioned in the review above (notably the use of names to give power to people) but this is by no means detracting in my opinion but rather adds to the validity of a magic realm by having cross-over with other authors. The characters in the novel are the heart of the work and Derek Landy has demonstrated he is a master at character development.

I look forward to listening to the whole series.

The novel is a good novel, albeit it starts off a bit slowly and predictively. But once it gets off, it is quite interesting, with Skullduggery Pleasant providing a lot of smart remarks and replies. It almost feels like you are reading a movie script rather than a novel with the amount of action involved.
On the good side, it has quite a few twists and turns, and the writer has used a lot of formulae (but not often used ones). The only criticism is that, it uses about the "true name" and "taken name" concept which has been mentioned in quite a few novels, whether it is Eragon series or Barthemeus the djinn's serries.

Apart from that, its a good read if you like Buffy the Vampire slayer type stuff (with a bit more humour and wit).

This is certainly entertaining, and the narration is great. But I'd rather read a Pratchett. All the bits of this individually make for entertainment, it's just that all together they don't stand out as anything vaguely new or novel. Everything has been done before, better. Didn't finish it.