Mortal Coil

Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 5

By: Derek Landy

Narrated by: Brian Bowles

Following the shocking revelations of DARK DAYS, get ready for the fifth instalment of the bestselling Skulduggery Pleasant series – guaranteed to contain at least 40% humour, 50% action, and 100% thrills…

"The blonde girl with the black lips turned to Valkyrie. 'We know,' she said. 'We've seen the future. We know you're going to kill the world…'"

Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain are back – just in time to see their whole world get turned upside down…

While they struggle to protect a known killer from an unstoppable assassin, Valkyrie is on a secret mission of her own. This quest, to prevent her dark and murderous destiny, threatens to take her to the brink of death and beyond. And then the body-snatching Remnants get loose, thousands of twisted souls who possess the living like puppets, and they begin their search for a being powerful enough to lead them. Facing such insurmountable odds, Skulduggery, Valkyrie, Ghastly and Tanith can trust no one. Not even each other…

©2010 Derek Landy (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

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KEEP AN OPEN MIND

The saga of Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain continues with edge-of-your seat suspense and unexpected twists and turns. This book is an excellent addition to the series. While it's true that this narrator fails to live up to the standards of Rupert Degas, he still does a creditable job portraying the various characters. In all fairness, no new narrator could replace Rupert Degas and the deadpan delivery that made Skulduggery Pleasant into the interesting character we knew and loved. I also miss the amusing sound effects and music of the earlier books. It seems that, like the Harry Potter series, as Valkyrie gets older, the story gets darker. I look forward to the next installment in the series.

Great fun, Great Story

You have to love Skulduggery Pleasant, he is a super suave detective with a great sense of humour. He and Valkyrie are great partners.
A fantastic book, can not wait for the next instalment

Snarky Dialogue and Humour Go Missing

I gave the first three books five stars, but the fourth book did not seem to have the same amount of hilarious dialogue and action and I was concerned that the author was running out of new ideas; I gave it four stars. In this book, Stephanie is 16 years old, and she is dealing with problems appropriate to her age but the snarky dialogue and humour are missing from most of this book. However, Scapegrace and Thrasher’s efforts to find a way to preserve their bodies is almost worth the purchase price of Mortal Coil, as their quest for a cure is very funny. It made me think of Monty Python’s Dead Parrot skit and I am sure that we will play that part of the book time and time again in our household.

I purchased the audio book as a download and it came in 2 six-hour parts. After listening to the first part, I was going to give the book four stars. Not five stars because I felt that some of the violence was inappropriate for the recommended lowest reading age. Unfortunately, the second part was largely taken up with violence that was gruesome and graphic, with very little humour or interesting dialogue. The fighting scenes in the second half of this story will probably appeal to readers who like horror and zombie stories, but I do not fit into that category, and I found the protracted violence to be brutal and of little interest. The previous books are 8 hours or less and they do not contain this level of violence. It would be nice if the publishers could release an abridged (eight hour) version of this story that did not contain the brutality found in this book.

I was very excited to find a series of books that I could listen to with the nieces and nephews, and purchased the first three books in soft cover to give as gifts. I will not purchase the last three books to give as gifts due to the increased level of violence. The next book (Death Bringer) is in the mail from Amazon and I am looking forward to reading it, but if the level of violence continues to escalate, I will not purchase book number seven.

mostly fisticuffs

This book has a different narrator from the previous ones. that is always abit annoying. Not that it is badly done, but the voices for the characters are different and that is unsettling . I will say this narrators voice is easier to hear when there is a lot of ambient noise. The story is OK. I really hope we will stay away from the twilight-esk love triangles in the future. There are a lot of fistfights in this book though. they get boring.

A different narrator

While the narration was good, it was rather difficult to get used to a different narrator once you've gotten used to another one for the last 4 books. the voices for each character had gotten familiar but with this book I had to memorize each voice anew. Brian Bowles did, however, do a good job on his narration and picking up such a large project in the middle of it.