Review of SP Mortal Coil

With Skulduggery safely home, all is well. To Val and Skul, "well" means (1) Valkyrie has to die and hopefully come back to life in order to keep herself, hopefully, from destroying the world, and (2) Val, Skul, and all their friends must keeps the Remnants both from destroying the world and from using Valkyrie to do it, as they suppose her to be their deity and they like to possess their deity and try to kill her friends.

Skulduggery Pleasant Mortal Coil by Derek Landy

Mortal Coil didn't impress me as much as the previous books, but to be honest, if I'd read it first, I'd consider it nearly the best book in the published world.

I wished the book had included more Val and Skul together time and more Skulduggery. The former would lead to the latter, which is one reason I wanted it, but I also love scenes where Val and Skul pal around. Their friendship seemed under attack this book. Aside from spending many scenes with people who weren't Skulduggery, Val apparently fears him, perhaps rightly so. He really might kill her to save the world, which is an awful good way to ruin a friendship. Although I'd understand if he did, I hope he wouldn't. I hope she's wrong. But even if she is, it could tear them apart. The friendship seems far less perfect now, and I mourn it.

Out of nowhere, a romance popped up between Valkyrie and Caelan, the vampire from the last book. Neither of them indicated they were interested in each other in Dark Days. I knew it was possible, since they're both young and beautiful, and there's no reason for characters to be young and beautiful except to be love interests, right? It's just, no strong hints had appeared. Here, though, it was full blown forbidden love. Secondly, through the chapter Valkyrie and Caelan spend together, the dialogue sounded unnatural, even the inner dialogue. When Caelan tells her they were meant to be everything or nothing to each other. When Val thinks about how his eyes burn into her soul, or something. Real people don't talk or think like that. Do they? I guess I wouldn't know. Maybe people just change when they fall in love. But it was worse because of how like Twilight it was. Caelan might seem different from Edward because Caelan even said he's not a brooding romantic figure but a monster. Except that's basically what Edward said too. Caelan even stalked Val to protect her. (He loves the side of her she shows her family. I see a Reflection/Caelan pairing in the future, since Val is taken and the Reflection is ALWAYS the side Caelan loves. The living reflection and the walking undead. Do Skulduggery vampires have reflections? If not, then she completes him. Aww. I actually wouldn’t mind that at all. It was foreshadowed much more than the Val and Caelan relationship.)

Now, I don't hate OR love Twilight, and I'm not saying Landy meant for it to happen but the two relationships are so similar and Twilight is so famous that, if he only tried, he could easily avoid similarities. He should, too, because I felt like I was reading recycled material. I felt that way again during the sword fight that mirrored a Princess Bride scene, especially since I dislike Princess Bride to begin with. I want my reading material to be original. I can sometimes appreciate when a book references another work in just a word -- like when Skul tries "mellon" as a password -- but not in whole scenes or character relationships. Catching one imitation, I get paranoid and suspicious of the rest of the book. I wonder if it’s okay to laugh at the jokes or if someone else invented them in a story I don’t know and I should be annoyed. Nevertheless, Skulduggery has been so original so far that I’m not really worried, and though I cringed through the Caelan chapter, I almost forgot about it after the Scapegrace chapter that followed.

Scapegrace becomes more pathetic and more sympathetic with each book. In said chapter, he visited two rival funeral homes which I knew right away were Skulduggery's friendly neighborhood funeral service providers. What a sweet twist. I easily believed it would happen too. He went there asking them to preserve decomposing bodies (his own and his sidekick's, but the funeral homes didn't know that). It was hysterical! If a more questionable author had written this, I might have worried they were making fun of religion, but I don’t think Landy would do that, whether or not he believes in God. Therefore, the chapter was light-hearted Scapegrace fun.

The other best chapter introduced Valkyrie to Doctor Nye. I knew that Valkyrie had to die, but I didn’t expect her to die when she got in the coach that carried her to Doctor Nye. I thought she’d get there, they’d do some spelly thing, and everything would go dark, but no. Actually, the book vividly detailed her sensations as she died. It surprised me in a delicious way. When she arrived at her destination, Nye was creepy because apparently its eyes had been sewn shut and the ends of the thread still appeared. Valkyrie passed a dismembered head who actually blinked at her, implying it was in the same state Val was in and understood all that happened even if it didn’t care. Creepy. Then Val watched as Nye cut her open. Creepy. However, the exclamation point came at the end of the chapter when Nye decided to keep Val forever and dissect her. CREEPY. By then, Val had no way out. Skulduggery didn’t know where she was, and she didn't even have the will to escape. She has to escape, we think. She’s the main character. But there’s no way. And the thought of Valkyrie the Corpse being completely dissected and stashed away in a meat house for eternity, knowing the whole time what was happening but unable to care or fret or plan or feel? That is a chilling thought. I wouldn’t have liked it if Val COULD feel pain, but she couldn’t. The most exquisitely frightening chapter, "Nye" (as I think it's called) is also one of the best in the series.


As for the rest of the characters, Finbar and Skulduggery were hilarious as always. Ghastly and Tanith struck up a romance that, like Val and Caelan's, seemed out of nowhere (or maybe, I suppose, I'm just horrendous at catching romantic undertones). Other than that, I don’t object to it. We lost Tanith to possession. She wasn’t one of my favorites, so I don’t mind. Besides, there’s no way they won’t cure her. (If Nye can find the soul, why can’t he find the remnant and remove it?) We also lost my second favorite character, Kenspeckle. I'm not at all distraught about this, which is just plain weird. It don’t know what it is. Perhaps it's Landy’s skill in making us feel what Val feels and she didn’t feel much when it happened. Or perhaps it was the way Kenspeckle's death was presented, so suddenly and matter-of-factly. (I was like, “Is he dead? He is? Are you sure he’s not just wounded? You should probably check.”) Or perhaps it's both. It seems logical that Val would feel so little about it right now, but hopefully the next book addresses it again and she feels more strongly about it. I do not want to see a rug pulled over it. Who’s going to heal broken bones and crab at Skulduggery now?

The plot seemed drawn out, probably because, for some strange reason, I expected the characters to resolve the Remnant thing early and focus on another issue. It still entertained me though. It was exciting, action-packed, plot-twisting, all that Skulduggery jazz. (By the way, I knew a remnant would turn Val into Darquesse. I didn't say anything to anyone because I didn't want to be wrong, but I knew it!)


Fantastic but not as fantastic as the others, SP Mortal Coil receives the following rating:

7/10