Playing With Fire

Playing with Fire by Derek Landy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

This is a pretty good YA book. It is non-stop action from beginning to end. I think young people will love it. Older people can enjoy it too but older individuals might not be inclined to rush into the next book in the series. Since it happened the first book in the series was not available, I started with this one and it took a while to come up to speed with respect to what was going on but after a time I managed it. I may continue with the series or at least go back and take a look at the first one but not in the near future.

There's also a bit of humour in the book. I particularly enjoyed the joke about the cannibal.

I recommend this book for authors who want to write action scenes because this author does it very well. Admittedly, the characters are superheros and supervillains loosely disguised by magic but they keep things moving. What impressed me was they way the author seemed to select bits and pieces from various genre, give them a twist and make use of them. For example, many of the fight scenes reminded me of ones I'd seen in anime. Heroes and villains are sent flying, possibly crash through walls and get right back into the fight. Skulduggery himself reminds me a little of the protagonist from Devil May Cry. Likewise, the villains are intent upon restoring the faceless gods who, from the description, seem rather like variations on the ones Lovecraft created.

Taking bits and pieces from here and then, reworking then into something original is something I think authors should consider.

Since this is a series don't look for everything to be resolved a the end but in general I thought the whole thing was very well done and young people will think it's great.



View all my reviews