Sunday, July 25, 2010

Reason Number Fifteen That Skeletons Are Awesome

BAMF!Skeleton.
Skeletons are awesome. Obviously.

Is that because you can always be a skeleton with a boner ("Get it? Get it?") for a cheapie Halloween costume? No. Does it have to do with their strong but silent "keeping-our-guts-and-skin-from-touching-and-allowing-for-movement" determination? Pshaw.

No, my friends, reason number fifteen that skeletons are awesome is because the ranks of skeletons include such wonderful characters as Skulduggery Pleasant. Who, for those of us playing the home version is at least five times more awesome than Skeletor, and three times more talkative than Yorik.



So picture this: your uncle dies. Very sad, he was a nice man and kind of like HP Lovecraft and had a cool house with a lot of secret passages. You're sad, everyone's sad, and then you meet a skeleton.

An honest to goodness skeleton. Who does magic, and tells jokes, and has a detective agency. Why a detective agency you may ask? Because he recognizes that the only thing cooler than being a skeleton is a skeleton with a detective agency, don't ask so many questions.

You, or in this case Stephanie Edgley, do what any sane person would do. You become BFF with the skeleton in order to find out the truth behind your uncle's mysterious death and so you can learn to throw fire from your hands. You meet a whole bunch of awesome wizards (think the Order of the Phoenix only Irish), perfect the art of witty banter with your skeleton BFF, and battle the forces of evil darkness all while growing as a character, having realistic moments of doubt and fear and puberty!driven light-angst, and find a new name for yourself.

And then you do it again (in at least four other books).

"Magic nuk nuk nuk."
The beauty behind Derek Landy's series is that it very easily could be too dark or too scary for its readers-- if he didn't have such a wonderful sense of humor and timing that the characters embody so well. The unstoppable walking dead, the ability to control another person with just their name, being tortured in several unique and terrifying ways-- these things could be legitimately unnerving. But Skulduggery and Stephanie are so dry in their wit and so obviously not wetting their pants that it reassures me, the reader, and lets me laugh at a situation that should be frankly terrifying.

Its like if a scary RL Stine book had a baby with the fourth Harry Potter, and that baby was raised by Batman doing a  three Stooges routine with Alfred and Dick in the Batcave. If that sounds like your cup of tea (which, hello, how can it not be?) go forth and read.

No comments:

Post a Comment