Quarter 1 Blog Post 5 ~ Kingdom of the Wicked

Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked

Derek Landy

Fantasy

300/390

Summary

When Valkyrie gets back from the other dimension, she meets up with Skulduggery and the Elders and tells them about the Sceptre of the Ancients. They make it a priority to get it the next time Valkyrie shunts, so they can use it against Argeddion. The only problem is that you can only use the Sceptre once the original owner is dead, and, in this case, that owner is Mevolent, so they would have to kill Mevolent to use the Sceptre. Fortunately, as one of them points out, interdimensional travel would wipe clean any object of power, so all you would have to do would be to recharge it and it would be ready for use. They put together three objectives for the next time Valkyrie shunted; one, to find a phrase from Argeddion’s childhood that is so traumatic that he shuts down, two, to get the Sceptre, and three (as Valkyrie insists), to rescue her reflection from the other reality.

           Skulduggery drives Valkyrie home after the meeting. She sneaks into her room and goes downstairs to see her parents, and excuse being out without them knowing. When she returns to her room, she calls Skulduggery and finds that he’s waiting outside in the garden in case she shunts. She calls him inside, and he waits in her room, ready to come along in case of shunting.

          In the morning, she and Skulduggery go to Kitana and Co.’s high school, where they had been spotted and were assumed to attack next. They have to evacuate the school without causing any panic, which would tip off Kitana and the others to their presence. They go to the teachers of each individual classes, posing as investigators, and tell them to evacuate their students and quickly and quietly as possible. They reach a class where they find Kitana, Doran and Sean already there. They activate a cloaking sphere, which makes them invisible and silences any sound they make. They go inside to find the group of teenagers, only to accidentally cover part of Sean’s leg with the sphere, so they have to knock him out and bring him inside the sphere. Kitana soon figures out what’s going on, so Skulduggery throws Sean at Doran, knocking the latter out, and leaps into a fight with Kitana. Meanwhile, Valkyrie evacuates the class through the window. She runs back to Skulduggery, and pulls him into the cloaking sphere. Skulduggery takes out his gun and shoots twice…

          …only to find the bullets stopped by the spontaneous appearance of Argeddion. He lets Kitana and Doran go free, and vanishes. Skulduggery and Valkyrie take Sean back to the Sanctuary, where they meet Ghastly. They send Elsie in to talk with Sean, and she gets the house where the teenagers were staying last. Then, as they are about to leave, Strom, the man representing the ‘Supreme Council’, comes and starts yelling at them. He rants about how Valkyrie and Skulduggery’s attempt to catch Kitana and Doran went terribly, and then he tells them how this Sanctuary is out of balance. He relieves the three Elders of their duties and takes control of the Sanctuary. Of course, no one listens. They lock him in a cell to prevent further interference, under the pretense that he is in a meeting.

         

Response

I’m really enjoying this book. I love the plot twists and how it’s written. I especially like the little conflict in the Sanctuary in between the Irish Sanctuary and the other Sanctuaries. The Irish people just won’t take anything from the other guys; they refuse to bend. It’s a great conflict besides the main conflict that helps make the story more interesting. I also really liked this one part; it was when Skulduggery came to Valkyrie’s room in case she should shunt in the middle of the night. They joked around a bit, and then Skulduggery sang Valkyrie to sleep. It was a really sweet moment.

Passage

“‘Come in,’ she whispered.

‘I’m fine out here.’

‘Don’t be dumb. You might be seen.’

He considered it, then climbed through, closing the window behind him. ‘And what if your parents walk in?’

‘Then I’ll tell them I borrowed the skeleton from the school lab and dressed it in a nice suit as a prank.’

‘You’re not known for your pranks.’

‘Maybe it’s time for that to change.’

He went to the wall opposite the bed, and slid down until he was sitting. With the light off, all she could see was the outline of his hat. ‘Do you want me to tell you a bedtime story?’

She smiled. ‘No thank you. You can sing me a lullaby if you want.’

And that’s what he did. In a voice so soft it barely reached her through the darkness, he sang her ‘Me and Mrs Jones’, and she fell asleep to his voice.”

I really like this passage. I find it’s a really sweet moment between Valkyrie and Skulduggery, and it shows their relationship perfectly. They joke around a bit, but in the end they’re so close to each other; it’s sort of an uncle-niece or maybe even older brother-sister relationship.