It’s almost as if Landy tried to work just with Elementals like Skulduggery but didn’t have enough variety to play with. China Sorrows’ body is (presumably magically) covered in multiple rune and symbol tattoos which can be activated to create effects Billy-Ray Sanguine seems to be able to sink through the physicality of earth or walls or prisons. Sorcerers come in two categories: Elementals who manipulate earth, fire, water and air and Adepts who can do anything else. There is a ramp up in the violence and gore here from the first book: the Grotesquery itself is a combination of gory detail and bandage-covered suggestion of worse numerous characters get ripped apart and poisoned and crushed.Ī note on Landy’s magic system. The baddie this time is Baron Vengeous (again letting us see Landy’s almost Dickensian playfulness with his characters’ names – although BBC Radio 4’s Dickensian spoof Bleak Expectations’ still wins the name calling contest for me, naming its antagonist Mr Gently Benevolent!) And the artefact in question is The Grotesquery: a dead Frankenstein hybrid of various parts of various monsters including the corpse of a Faceless One. In terms of plot, there’s a sense of déjà vu from the first book: a general from the previous war escapes from prison he sets about acquiring an artefact to bring back ancient Gods, the Faceless Ones he is defeated on the cusp of success. Reading this immediately after the first in the series, Skulduggery Pleasant, is interesting: it highlights both some flaws and some developments.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |