Dark Days

Written by Derek Landy

Narrated by Rupert Degas

Meet Skulduggery Pleasant: detective, sorcerer, warrior.

Oh yes. And dead.

Skulduggery Pleasant is gone, sucked into a parallel dimension overrun by the Faceless Ones. If his bones haven’t already been turned to dust, chances are he’s insane, driven out of his mind by the horror of the ancient gods. There is no official, Sanctuary-approved rescue mission. There is no official plan to save him.

But Valkyrie's never had much time for plans.

The problem is, even if she can get Skulduggery back, there might not be much left for him to return to. There’s a gang of villains bent on destroying the Sanctuary, there are some very powerful people who want Valkyrie dead, and as if all that wasn’t enough it looks very likely that a sorcerer named Darquesse is going to kill the world and everyone on it.

Skulduggery is gone. All our hopes rest with Valkyrie. The world’s weight is on her shoulders, and its fate is in her hands.

These are dark days indeed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Release date: Sep 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9780008273132

Derek Landy

Derek Landy lives near Dublin. Before writing his children's story about a sharply-dressed skeleton detective, he wrote the screenplays for a zombie movie and a murderous horror film. "I think my career-guidance teacher is spinning in her grave," he says, "or she would be if she were dead."

Reviews for Dark Days

[Shaila Mahabier · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I expected her to save Skulduggery, and that it wouldn't be too hard, it was even easier and sooner than I had expected. Then the excitement and all was just as always there, yet this book was a little more predictable.
I am just happy that Skulduggery is sassy as always even in this book and after all that happened to him.

[bookbrig-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Still an excellent story, but a bit darker than the others. Plus, not as much of the funny.

[karenduff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have ordered this book from Play and at the time of writing I'm still waiting on it although now that I've had the book from the school library and have read it no doubt it will have arrived today, oh well.

As for the book what can I say, I absolutely love this series and I hate when the book is finished as then I need to wait on the next one although thankfully I only need to wait until September. I love Landy's humour and sarcasm. The characters are brilliant, they are well developed and well written.

[tahleen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I think this book is the most illuminating about each character yet. We learn a lot about every major character in the series, from revelations about their pasts and from their actions. The ending leaves the reading with a need to know what will happen to everyone, especially with Valkyrie—it's a doozy.

As far as the audiobook production value, I was disappointed that it wasn't of the same caliber as the previous three. There was no music and no sound effects, and I was shocked to hear at one point that Rupert Degas had switched his voices for two characters for a brief period, which was very obvious and distracting. Other than that, Degas is an excellent narrator and I loved listening to this entire series. However, because of how difficult it was for me to obtain the audio version of book 4, I will most likely be reading the next books in the series instead of listening to them, much as it pains me.

[sageness · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wow, this one was menacing-dark and really violent. Definitely not a young kid's series anymore. This one was more obviously influenced by later Harry Potter, and I'm loving Sanguine - the main bad guy - something fierce. The whole series continues to be full of bits that remind me of Doctor Who for some reason, too. (Which is entirely fine by me.) I want to give it 2 stars for the plot twisting in nonsensical ways and there being too many threads left dangling, but my pleasure in reading these characters' adventures ranks up at a near-guiltless five. So. I *wish* Landy had a better sense of drawing a primary plot containable in a single novel in the greater series, but I'll cope. I'm hooked.

[riida_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

i just burned through my copy of dark days...in about 8 hours straight! truth be told, the skulduggery pleasant books are about the only ones i can read this fast these days. each of them is just a roller-coaster ride of pure, mindless fun with a healthy helping of wise cracks! :Din this fourth installment though, it seems the ante has been raised a bit. i have began to appreciate the other dimensions of the characters' personalities, and derek landy finally introduced the one element missing from the series so far: an over-arching story line tied to a voldemort-like villain!but always, valkyrie and skulduggery are all about the fun :D

[phoebesmum · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The fourth in the sequence, and book #3’s cliffhanger – Skulduggery is left trapped in another dimension with only the Faceless Ones for company – is quickly resolved. Thereafter it’s a race against time to stop a league of criminal sorcerers, including some familiar faces, from destroying the Sanctuary. Skulduggery himself is taking more and more of a back seat in this series, leaving the way clear for Valkyrie/Stephanie to fulfil her destiny (of course, Stephanie *would* have a destiny). A fun, light read, well-written and with a lot of entertaining dialogue, but the plot is not much more than an endless string of fight scenes, and there are far too many sketchily-drawn secondary characters. And either I nodded off, or at one point the story makes absolutely no sense at all.

[lilibrarian · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Book 4 in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, where Valkyrie risks entering the domain of the faceless ones to rescue Skulduggery, and a group of magical malcontents and villains threatens Ireland.