These two books don’t actually have much in common, but I’m killing two birds with one stone here because they’re both sequels to books I really enjoyed, and while I liked both books, I don’t have a heck of a lot to say about either one.

Behemoth is the sequel to the awesome steampunk Leviathan. In this installment, Deryn and Alek go their separate ways in Istanbul: Deryn’s got a secret mission to help the Darwinist powers hold the Dardanelles out of Clanker hands, while Alek’s looking for allies to help him end the war.

One thing I really like about this is that, despite being a middle book, it doesn’t read as just a way to move the characters from Point A in the first book to Point B for the conclusion in the third. I think Deryn’s story is stronger in this regard — she’s actually got a mission she’s attempting to carry out, where Alek stumbles into a rebellion and makes the best of it — but their two stories came together perfectly and the climax was pulled off really well. And we got another couple new female characters into the mix, which is great for a book that takes place in the midst of military actions, which tend to skew male.

One thing Jess and I discuss when we talk books is that she’s a much shippier reader than I am. She actually liked Leviathan more than I did, because I was pretty much indifferent to the budding romance between Alek and Deryn, and she loved it. This book works the romance in a lot more heavily… and this time, I really enjoyed it. I came out of it much more invested in their relationship than after the first. The book is a solid four and a half cupcpakes, only missing five because the background politicking remains somewhat confusing.

Blue Fire is the sequel to The Shifter. In it, Nya and her friends are still wanted by the Duke for some nefarious purpose — and when her friends are arrested, Nya has to sneak into enemy territory to try to get them back.

This book had essentially all of the same strengths as the first did: Nya’s voice is strong and fun, high stakes, and great worldbulding. Seriously — worldbuilding is a huge part of my love of sci fi and fantasy, and Hardy does a great job in Blue Fire of creating a whole new city with its own personality, distinct from that in the first book, while making them feel like part of the same world overall. She also really gets into exploring Nya’s healing powers. She lets healing be a power that’s as morally dubious as the person who uses it, and goes further into its uses than most authors (for example, creepy soldiers who can heal themselves in the midst of battle by shifting their pain into their armor).

That said, I found it hard to keep track of what Nya’s skills actually do. She’s not a “normal” healer, so her abilities are different and harder to pin down, and she discovers new facets on occasion. I was also pretty lost by the climax. Now, I admit I do tend to skim looking for dialogue and action (terrible habit, I know, but breaking it after so long is not easy!) but I went back and reread when I realized I was lost… and still couldn’t quite work it out. I was a little confused by the first book’s climax, too, but afterwards it had a handy, “This is what that means,” paragraph so I got it. In Blue Fire, I was left going, “…huh?” (That said, I appreciate that at least Hardy doesn’t talk down to her readers.)

However, the denouncement and the cliffhanger at the end were great. I think the very last section adds a lot of depth to the supporting cast, and I can’t wait to see the how everything plays out when the series ends. Four cupcakes.

Having saved the monastery of Vbngoom from certain destruction, all Lily, Katie, and Jasper want to do is head home. But the despotic government of Delaware is none too eager to let these troublesome children past the state borders, and the Ministry of Silence has eyes everywhere. With the help of the monks of Vbngoom, our heroes desperately struggle towards the New Jersey border, but there’s a spy among their party…

Aside from my recent conflicted screed on Immortal Beloved, I feel like I’ve had a lot of really short reviews lately that have just said “This book is so great! You should read it!” Unfortunately, here comes another one:

Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger! is so great! You should read it!

Seriously, that’s really all I have to say. I’ve talked about this weird little series before at length (it seems to have been firmly branded as “Pals in Peril” now, as the first two books have been re-released under that banner); it’s goofy and gleefully metatextual and kind of melancholy in places, and I really love it a lot. This particular volume is another fast-paced, silly adventure that made me laugh out loud in multiple places, and as such is a worthy addition to the series. I’m already chomping at the bit to read the next one, not just because I love these books, but because Anderson appears to be stringing together a more continuous narrative, and I want to find out what happens next.

Agent Q wasn’t perfect – Anderson has set up a love triangle, and while it’s very low-key (these kids are in middle school, after all) and the characters aren’t behaving like jerks about it, I really despise love triangles. And this book failed to tug on the heartstrings the way The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen and Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware did. But it’s still really, really fun.

Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger! (I love writing out that title) gets four and a half cupcakes. These books aren’t for everyone, but they are definitely for me, and I can’t wait for the next one.

Miri is stuck in the middle between twin brothers and twin sisters, and feels totally alone, especially when they move to a big old house in the middle of the country. But when she finds a mysterious piece of glass in her room, she looks through it and finds herself transported to 1935, where she meets a girl just her age named Molly, who begs Miri to save her. Now Miri’s got to figure out how to get both of them back to the present – and it might just be a matter of life and death.

This is so cute! Right from the cover on down, everything about it is adorable. Miri is a likable protagonist in the Imaginative Loner mode, and Molly is a little spitfire (and feisty orphans or semi-orphans from the 30s are just about my favorite thing ever). I also love a good time travel plot handled well, and The Magic Half is definitely that; watching the girls set up the necessary components to make sure that in 75 years Miri is able to set the plot in motion was a delight. Plus I can’t really fault a book that’s all about two little girls figuring out magic, defeating a bad guy, and becoming friends.

I also thought a side aspect of the book was done really well: the sibling rivalry. Since we started this blog I’ve run across quite a few books where the siblings are viciously nasty to each other, actively wishing for the other to experience physical agony and so on. Like, ten-year-old kids, wishing for this. I find that more than a little disturbing. This book has siblings who tease, annoy, exclude, and fight with each other – boy do they ever – but they still come off as a believable family of non-sociopaths who love each other. Even when Miri whacks her brother over the head with a shovel, it’s clearly in the heat of the moment, and she’s terrified that she’s hurt him. Take note, children’s authors: this is how you write believably antagonistic siblings who don’t come off like future serial killers!

Anyway, the book was basically a big pile of charm and delighted me all the way through, so: four and a half cupcakes.

Simple goose girl Alexandria should never have given the old beggar woman the last of her food. The woman turned out be her fairy godmother, and now Alexandria is the most beautiful girl in the world, with tears of diamonds and hair that shakes out gold dust – and trapped in a tower by an evil King and a foolish Prince, both of whom want to marry her. With the help of her geese, she escapes, but she still has to overcome ogres, wicked baronesses, and a decades-long conspiracy if she wants to reach her happily ever after.

I read this on the recommendation of my friend Mackenzie, and she was totally right – it’s incredibly charming. I love fairy tales, and this has all the rhythms of one while being rather tongue-in-cheek about the whole thing; every flouncey speech that came out of the characters’ mouths made me laugh.

There’s actually not much to say about it – it’s just straightforwardly good. Alexandria is a likable protagonist; she’s clever and brave, but also has a tendency to think too highly of her own cleverness and not listen to other people. The Prince – who turns out to be perhaps not as foolish as Alexandria originally thought – is a big lovable sweetheart, and the villains are nicely threatening. The reveals, too, are well-paced so that you gradually twig to the big twist just before the characters do, which is always ideal.

I feel like I should be saying more about this book, but really it’s just a fun, fast read with a good heroine, and I highly recommend it for some light reading. Four and a half cupcakes.

In the hugely anticipated final book in the Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss finds herself at the center of the growing rebellion. But even in isolated District 13 there are politics she must navigate and dangers she must guard against – not to mention Peeta is still a prisoner of the Capitol. Can Katniss be the rebels’ Mockingjay without becoming a pawn in someone else’s game? And what will the cost of independence be?

Warning: there will be CRAZY spoilers after the cut.

Jess: Well, I’ll say this right off the bat: it’s a brilliantly written book. I got it at a midnight event, went home to sleep, then woke up and didn’t move from my bed until I had finished it. I don’t think I even took a bathroom break. It’s incredibly gripping and exciting; even when you’re devastated by what’s happening on the page, you can’t put it down.

Becky: Ditto. I made the mistake of reading the first few chapters before sleeping, and tossed and turned all night because my brain wouldn’t turn off. Taken as a whole, I love this trilogy. And that’s why it pains me to say that when push comes to shove, I didn’t like the ending. The book had me for at least 3/4 of the way through, even up through the climax — in fact, the climax of the team making its way through the Capitol was one of my favorite sections of the book. But then you hit Prim’s death, and bam. I’m done.

Jess: Agreed. In part that’s because I kept waiting for Katniss to do something, to have any idea of the bigger picture, to make choices about the future of her world. But she never really does. It was a problem in the second book, too, but I thought at least it might be remedied by the end of the third…but no. Katniss is played all the way through, and all she gets to do in both Catching Fire and Mockingjay is fire an Arrow of Significance without really understanding the consequences or dealing with the fallout.

Becky: There are actually a bunch of facets there that didn’t work for me. Like the fact that as soon as Katniss sees Prim die, she goes comatose… actually, she spends a lot of the book that way. I absolutely understand why; the story is about war and Katniss is a victim of war. It would’ve been extremely cheap for Collins not to show the consequences. But in a first person narrative, if your narrator is unconscious or otherwise taken out of the picture, so is your reader. I had been less than thrilled when Katniss broke down over Peeta earlier in the book and so he was rescued by other people, entirely off-page, but moved past it because the story is so compelling. But having Katniss go completely comatose at the book’s climax? I couldn’t pass that one over. She didn’t do anything at that point, except eventually get the Arrow of Significance, and after that she didn’t even know she was on trial, let alone participate or do anything to deal with rebuilding Panem. So a) that’s disappointing when you have a character who has (in most ways) been so active for two-and-a-half-ish books; and b) that’s not great storytelling, which is disappointing from Collins, who is usually an amazing storyteller.

Jess: Though I’m loath to ascribe motives to writers – how the hell do I know what they’re thinking, right? – I can’t help feeling like Collins was so intent on showing us the horrors of war that her storytelling suffered for it. Your mileage may vary, of course, but Becky and I are both structure nuts, and I think the structure of the book fell apart with Prim’s death. From a storytelling perspective, Prim’s death was completely redundant – we already saw Prim die when Rue died, since Rue was always essentially a Prim stand-in.

Furthermore, Katniss’s primary motivation from the very beginning of the first book was to save Prim. She ultimately failed to do this, obviously, since Prim died – but by voting in favor of having a Hunger Games with Capitol children, she’s failed all Prims everywhere. And yes, in war, children and loved ones die, and there’s nothing you can do, and it’s senseless and horrible and there’s no narrative cohesion. But in terms of a story…the protagonist failed at her primary goal in every sense, hooray?

Becky: I also feel like the book couldn’t quite pick a moral and that was part of the problem. You have a great scene of Katniss talking an enemy soldier out of being an enemy, and talk about forgiveness and rebuilding as the way forward and the way to prevent future tragedies. But you also have the moral of “war is hell, and destroys everything and everyone.” Which is a fine message, if depressing, but the two are pretty direct opposites. And because Katniss herself is too traumatized to be part of the rebuilding at the end, all you end up with is the idea that everything is hell, and there’s nothing you can do to fix it, because there’s nothing Katniss can do. I don’t know if that’s what Collins intended (though I hope not), and again, it certainly isn’t wrong to write a moral I happen to disagree with… but as a reader, I just found it too upsettingly horrible.

Jess: Exactly. If the books are supposed to be about breaking the cycle of violence and hatred, they need to show the cycle broken, and we have no faith that it will be. The only major character who seems to be in favor of that is Peeta, and he was never part of that cycle to begin with. Instead we’re left with broken Katniss, broken Haymitch, and some incredibly minor character we have a vaguely positive feeling about left in charge of the government.

Becky: So yes: the ending had its issues. But it also had bright spots. Like Peeta! As I’ve said about a billion times on this site, I’m not a particularly shippy reader, and I was never even remotely interested in the romance — it seemed very much Not The Point. But as a character, in and of himself, Peeta was wonderful through the whole series, and shone in the third book. His arc was wonderful and sad. When he was rescued and everything went all to hell, I was genuinely upset. I was worried about him! Like he was a real person I could somehow rescue and cuddle! Because he needs all the cuddles. Except for those reserved for Finnick, of course.

Jess: Oh, absolutely. In general, the characters were brilliantly drawn. Peeta and Finnick broke my heart, Haymitch was wonderful, and though I didn’t like the fact that Prim died, I liked that she was allowed to become more of a person in this book instead of a delicate flower Katniss had to protect. I also thought Gale was very well done. I pretty much can’t stand Gale (and I hated the love triangle), but his character arc works so well.

Becky: And newcomer Boggs was great, too. There were so few genuinely good people in the series that it was nice to see someone new who just wanted to do the right thing. And Cinna, while he obviously never appeared, was still a great (and very felt) presence. I actually missed him terribly as a person, if only because, looking back, he was one of the only characters who didn’t manipulate Katniss — he went out of his way to make sure she’d be the one who made the choice to be the Mockingjay, even though that was what he wanted for her. What a classy guy. Um, character.

Jess: There was so much about this book that was so great, and yet there were some really disappointing aspects to it as well. As much as it pains us, Mockingjay only gets four cupcakes (the only non-perfect score Suzanne Collins has ever gotten on this site!), bringing the series down to four and a half cupcakes overall. Still a respectable showing, though, and if these books don’t go down in history as classics of the genre, well, we’re sad.

High school student Ellie’s life is fairly normal, until she agrees to help out with a play at the local university, thanks to the urging of her best friend, Kevin. But someone else in the play has her sights set on Kevin – someone not quite human – and suddenly Ellie finds herself navigating the world of the New Zealand supernatural armed only with a magic mask and the help of the mysterious Mark (on whom Ellie just happens to have an enormous crush). As Ellie discovers that the mythology of her homeland is all too real, she finds that that selfsame mythology is threatening to destroy New Zealand – and that she may be the only person left who can stop it.

(Full disclosure: Karen is actually a friend of mine. I shall do my best to review without bias!)

There are two striking things about this book that set it apart from 99% of the YA fantasy lit out there. One is, of course, the setting. Guardian of the Dead isn’t just set in Karen’s native New Zealand; New Zealand informs everything about the book – the culture and geography, of course, but more importantly the magic. No tired dragons or vampires here – the fantasy element in Guardian takes the form of beautiful, terrifying, fairy-like patupaiarehe and powerful, sea-serpentine taniwha, and creation myths star Māui and Hine-nui-te-po instead of Zeus or Odin. Everything is carefully explained for the benefit of clueless readers like yours truly, but the explanations are smoothly integrated into the plot (and there’s a helpful note from the author at the end for further clarification). While this may feel info-dumpy to people familiar with Māori mythology, it was all fresh and fascinating to me.

The other aspect of the book that really struck me was its determined inclusiveness. The cast is remarkably diverse: Ellie, being white, is distinctly in the minority, though there are mixed-race characters who “pass.” Kevin is of Māori descent; Ellie’s sort-of friend Iris is of Chinese descent; Ellie’s favorite teacher is black; and the ranks of minor characters are filled with people of varying ethnicities. And it’s not glossed over; race is something Ellie thinks about and is careful to be politically correct about, and the different cultures she interacts with have a direct bearing on her life, in both mundane and extraordinary ways. Furthermore, Kevin is asexual, marking the first time I’ve seen an explicitly asexual character in a YA novel, and Ellie’s older sister (who doesn’t appear in the book) is gay. It shouldn’t be so remarkable that this book represents the diversity of real life in a way that most literature – hell, most media, full stop – doesn’t do, but it is, and Guardian should be commended for being inclusive without ever taking away from the narrative.

Aside from that, the book is just really good. Ellie is believably teenage, self-conscious and uncomfortable in her own skin, but simultaneously extremely self-reliant and unafraid to stand up for herself or speak her mind, a difficult balancing act for a protagonist. Her romance with Mark had me almost embarrassingly hooked, cooing over all their little moments together and hoping for a happy ending. Her developing friendship with Iris, and Iris in general, really pleased me, since I love to see narratives of female friendship handled well. And the fantasy adventure itself is exciting and very, very scary, scenes of sheer horror bursting through a general ominous storm cloud of something wicked this way coming.

My only quibble is with the somewhat odd pacing of the book. For the entire first half, the terrifying villain is Reka, a patupaiarehe woman. Then, abruptly, we discover that all of the patupaiarehe are trying to destroy New Zealand, but Reka’s okay. We’re suddenly left without a face to latch onto as regards the patupaiarehe threat, but at the same time introduced to Mr. Sand, a thoroughly creepy sort of vampire of magic who serves as an excellent villain for the rest of the book…except he has nothing to do with the patupaiarehe. If Mr. Sand had been introduced earlier, or the patupaiarehe given more specificity instead of being just a big scary something, it would have eased the transition from the first half to the second; as it is, they feel somewhat disjointed.

That said, Guardian of the Dead is still an exciting, scary, fun read, and I enjoyed it very much. It gets four and a half cupcakes, and I’m off to go bug Karen about letting me read her next book. Wish me luck!

Title: My Teacher is an Alien
Author: Bruce Coville
Genre: Aliens Among Us
Pages: 123

Summary: Susan doesn’t like the substitute teacher who’s taken over her sixth grade class — and she finds out he’s not just strict, he’s an alien! Now she and Peter, the smartest kid in class, have only a few days to expose him, before he kidnaps some of their classmates and takes them off to space forever.

Thoughts: What is there to even say? Bruce Coville is the reason I love reading, and the reason I love sf/f in particular. This was the most formative series of my childhood. The first book is pretty light and silly (the end of the series is quite a bit heavier), and utterly delightful.

Four and a half cupcakes.

Title: California Diaries: Amalia, Diary 1
Author: Ann M. Martin
Genre: Teen drama llama
Pages: 180
Summary: Amalia starts volunteering with her sister at a women’s shelter, while dealing with an abusive boyfriend of her own.
Thoughts: I like Amalia, and THANK GOD that for once someone in a BSC-universe series actually deals with a dangerous situation in an appropriate fashion. Amalia breaks up with James pretty much the moment he almost hits her, and doesn’t confuse “fighting her own battles” with “confronting him alone like a moron.” This is paralleled really well with the shelter story, which a) shows how hard it is for battered women to accept that they need to leave their abusive husbands/boyfriends, b) points out the importance of restraining orders, calling the police, and in general being prepared and safe, and c) makes the heartbreaking point that the law often doesn’t do enough to protect women. All very well done, and actually brought a couple of tears to my eyes. (Which was why the total bullshit ending made me throw the book across the room. YOU NEED TO TELL THE POLICE OR AT LEAST THE PRINCIPAL THAT YOUR EX-BOYFRIEND IS A SOCIOPATHIC STALKER.)

Four and a half cupcakes

Ryan, Josh, and Chelle don’t think much of it when they steal a few coins from a wishing well for bus fare back home. But to steal the coins from a well spirit is to take on her obligation of granting wishes, and soon the kids find themselves developing the powers to do just that – from the eyes on Ryan’s knuckles that see things they shouldn’t, to Chelle’s newfound ability to speak the thoughts of strangers, to Josh’s sudden affinity with electromagnetism. It’s then that they find that the wishes people make in their hearts are infinitely darker and more dangerous than the ones they speak aloud, and that the changes the well witch has wrought in them go deeper than they think.

This book, verging on the horror side of fantasy, is not really my kind of story, and I probably wouldn’t have picked it up if I hadn’t been so deeply enamored of Francis Hardinge thanks to Fly By Night. And, well, we can chalk this up to another great quality of Fly By Night, because Well Witched is awesome. For starters, it’s genuinely creepy and sinister; I was scared and grossed out in all the right places, and the villains are truly menacing even when riddled with pathos. The tone isn’t as wonderfully rich as that of Fly By Night, but when it hits, it hits hard.

Ryan is a pretty appealing, though standard, protagonist. He’s a quiet, reserved boy with a great love of reading and a unique way of looking at the world – very typical stuff for kids’ lit. I found Chelle much more interesting. She starts off as a very anxious, obedient nonentity – the boys describe her as “coleslaw,” something nice enough to get with your meal but nothing you’d order on its own – and gradually comes out of her shell and becomes a really vivacious, competent person. Moreover, the seeds of her change are planted well in advance, so her coming into her own feels very natural.

On the other hand, I disliked Josh pretty severely. This concerned me at first, because I expect Francis Hardinge to handle character well, but it gradually became clear that I wasn’t necessarily supposed to like him, and then I felt better. I still wouldn’t say his characterization is without flaws, though. See, he’s essentially a charismatic bully. The problem is that we see the bullying, but not the charisma – Ryan just tells us that he’s charismatic. Thus I had no emotional attachment to him, and couldn’t understand why Ryan and Chelle did. Ah, well, they can’t all be perfect.

For me, the greatest characterization in Well Witched was that of Ryan’s parents, particularly his mother. They bicker constantly, and Ryan spends the book aggravated with his mother and worrying that his parents are going to get divorced, but he eventually comes to realize that for all her flaws, his mother loves him (and Ryan’s father) fiercely, and would die to protect him. The strength of a mother’s love, and the lengths a mother will go to to ensure her child’s happiness, are actually a major theme of the book, and a powerful and moving one at that. Again, Hardinge builds this up and weaves it through all the subplots of the book brilliantly. This is because Francis Hardinge is awesome.

However, the great strength of the book is the backstory. The explanation of the well witch and the recent history surrounding her are brilliant, especially the way they weave pagan folklore with Christianity. I can’t say any more without ruining it, but trust me, it’s good. I also really liked the moral of the story: that rather than wishing, you should go out and make the changes you want in your life. Fly By Night insisted on not letting others do your thinking for you; Well Witched insists on not letting others do your doing for you, either.

My only quibble, besides Josh, is that at certain points it was very difficult to follow the action, particularly during the scene where Ryan, Chelle, and two of their wishers are escaping from a flash flood. It’s a fairly minor one, though, so Well Witched gets four and a half cupcakes, and a candle to make a wish on on top! (Oh ho, do you see what I did there?)

Ever since helping to save the world, Valkryie Cain (once plain old Stephanie Edgeley) has been receiving training in magic, combat, and detective work from the undead gumshoe Skulduggery Pleasant and his extremely colorful associates. Now one of Skulduggery’s old enemies is back, intent on awakening his evil gods – and Valkryie is a major part of his plan. In order to foil the plot, Valkryie must fight her way through centuries-old enmities, corruption at the highest level, and more than one sociopathic killer with a mad-on for Valkryie herself.

I gave the first book in this series the full five cupcakes, since it was such a giddy punchfest with incredibly appealing characters and some very strong worldbuilding. Playing With Fire continues in that vein, but it did have a few issues here and there which kept cropping up and making me go “Well, hmm.”

For starters, I don’t know if Landy has a secret dream of becoming a Hollywood fight choreographer or what, but there were so many fight scenes, and each one was meticulously over-described. It seemed like every few pages Valkyrie or Skulduggery or Tanith Low was duking it out with some villain or another, and the literally blow-by-blow descriptions of said dukage started making my eyes glaze over. I don’t need to know that Skulduggery led with a right hook and followed it up with an uppercut to the jaw or whatever. I can’t see it, so it doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t know exactly how to reach the happy medium between this and being too vague, which is just as bad (i.e. “They struggled for a bit, but it soon became apparent that Character A had the upper hand,” which I’ve seen other writers *coughMichaelBuckleycough* do), but if Landy wants to keep this much fisticuffs in his books, he’s gotta find it.

Of course, part of the reason there were so many fight scenes in the book was because there were so many villains. All told, there was one (1) meglomaniacal zealot, three (3) serial killers, one (1) vampiric mercenary, one (1) corrupt government official, one (1) crazy shapeshifting recluse, several (like 6) vampire zombie things, a bunch of (4-ish) drunken wizard thugs, and one (1) plain old monster, although several of the previously-listed villains could certainly be categorized as monsters as well. And aside from the vampire zombie things and the thugs, none of them were cannon fodder – they all had personalities, subplots, motivations, you name it. That’s good, of course…except when you have so very many of them. I mean, three serial killers, Landy? That’s really two more than you need, unless you’re Thomas Harris and this is yet another Silence of the Lambs spinoff.

The problem was really that there was too much book in the book. The heroes have to stop Baron Vengeous from carrying out his terrible plan, so they have to keep him from getting this magical armor, but he gets that, so they have to stop him from getting the body of the Grotesquery, but he gets that, so they have to stop him from getting a heart for it…there were so many repetitive steps being carried out by so many characters that it became rather hard to follow. It seemed like Landy had a million great ideas (and though there are too many elements, they’re all good) and no one to tell him to streamline it. Frankly I would have preferred dropping out some of that noise in favor of more on Valkyrie’s unhealthy and growing distance from anything resembling a normal life, which was subtle and fascinating.

All that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Valkyrie remains a strong, interesting central character, and her personality is never overwhelmed by the far more colorful figures around her, which is an impressive feat. I particularly enjoy her relationships with the other characters. She’s adorable in her role of student to Skulduggery’s mentor, of course, with a nice combination of respecting him and totally not respecting him. The standout for me, though, is her relationship with her parents. Unlike most tween/teenage protagonists, she actually gets along with them, although she’s aware of their foibles. There’s no angst there, despite the slightly dysfunctionality of her father’s relationships with his brothers (one of whom, Gordon, was the uncle who’s death kicked off all of Valkyrie’s adventures); they’re just likeable and a little loopy and very sweet. It’s a nice change.

And as usual, the supporting characters are great, the dialogue is witty, and the adventure is exciting, with just enough left unexplained at the end to leave you impatient for the next book. It’s just fun. Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire has a little to much going on to get the rating its predecessor got, but it still earns itself a very respectable four and a half cupcakes. When is the next one coming out again?