Skeleton-sleuth Skulduggery Pleasant and his thirteen-year-old partner-in-mystery, Valkyrie Cain, are back to save the world for a second time. This time they face a diverse cast of villains from a sorcerer rated "11 on the 10-point Evil Villain Scale” to a battalion of vampires. Rupert Degas uniquely expresses each baddie, creating chills with gravely and whispery voices. Degas’ flippant, quick delivery of witty lines brings about Skulduggery’s friendly hip manner, these counterpointed with a flatness that only barely covers his core of coldness and a hint of protective fondness for Valkyrie. Degas doesn’t flag in his narration of the non-stop action, keeps up with chases, fights, rescues, and high speed dialogue and without a pause gives reality to all characters and credibility to their relationships. I’d recommend this for an earphone award.
Derek Landy has had a stutter since the age of three, and though it has improved with age, when young he could never voice his wit. “I was in a lot of situations where I’d be hanging around a lot of people and I would have the best joke in the world in my head, but I wouldn’t get involved in the conversation because I knew I would hesitate, or I’d put so much importance and expectation into my remark that I’d wither.”
When he began to write, he invented intelligent, confident characters who talked with speed equaled by the swiftness of their comebacks. “Everything I couldn’t do in speech, I did in writing.” Landy wrote several quirky low-budgets scripts like “Boy Eats Girl” before the book idea for Skulduggery Pleasant hit him like a bolt of creative lightning. “I could easily write a 100 page script, but the thought of a novel was daunting. I have a short attention span and get bored easily.” Wisely, he decided that fun would be his major motivation. He mixed genres that he loved-- horror, magic, mystery, and monsters--- and wedded them with strong voice and humor. As he begins work on his third in the series and plots another six books, he’s having a “complete blast."
The books’ popularity considerably changed more than Landy’s financial situation. The young man who’d “spent a lot of time of the fringe” now involves himself in every aspect of his books and the fun keeps mounting. His role in the audio began with a long meeting with reader Rupert Degas. Then he sent email descriptions of his characters including thoughts about their nationalities, dialects, and likenesses to specific actors. A conference call linked Landy in Ireland and Degas in England. As they talked about characters, Degas “slipped in and out of different voices and I’d say ‘That one, and that one, or that one, but a bit deeper voice’ so the characters sounded exactly how I imagined them in my head.” Even though he’d been very involved, the final production stunned Landy with its brilliance.
Degas has an exquisite range of tones and personas, but his most intriguing portrayal is that of the main character, Skulduggery Pleasant, the magical, mystery-solving skeleton. He’s the ultimate in a multi-faceted character, being a few hundred years old, “ not your typical good guy. He is friendly and witty, but behind it all is the coldness that lets him do the things he does.” Landy experiences Rupert Degas’ very fast dialogue with “ pure joy.”
In May 2007 Landy went to Hollywood for “the most fun eight days of my life”, talking to people he’d always respected and finally signing up a Skulduggery film with Warner Brothers. “It’s like having a dream come true.”
If he could offer one piece of advice to other writers who wish for the same, “It doesn’t matter what you write as long as you put in a piece of yourself, a piece of your own humanity and experience—something genuine into your story. It elevates the story and the reader’s caring.” He sees much of himself in Skulduggery Pleasant, “Only I’m just a little fatter.”