Skulduggery Pleasant; Until The End – Review

I rate it 9/10, this review contains major spoilers for the Skulduggery Pleasant series up to and including Book 15, Until the End.

I’m going to start this one off by saying that I have been a fan of this series since its debut. I read the hardcover copy of book one for the Bolton Book Awards in my first year of high school, and I have been following this series ever since.

That’s right. I own every copy, with as many in limited edition as I can get my hands on. I’m a big fan. I have my collector’s edition of Dying of the Light, plus the less fancy one that I bought to actually read.

But I had trouble getting into book 15.

Above is my collection back in September 2021 after Grimoire was released.

A Rough Beginning

I don’t know, it just felt extremely repetitive of previous entries in this series, and for the fifteenth time I was far too aware of the attempts to quickly remind the reader of the personality behind each name and what their magic discipline can do.

I imagine I’d prefer a summary page preceding the text instead, like the opening to Star Wars but it wouldn’t move because it would be on a page. On the other hand, I just know that other readers and writers would view that as lazy and cheap.

I don’t know the right answer, all I do know is that the first hundred pages left me feeling a bit bored, to the point where I was considering this as the last Skulduggery book I was ever going to buy.

Still Grieving

I spent books 13 and 14 grieving over the death of Abyssinia. She was my favourite villain across the entire series, and I hated how quickly she left the plot. Now, if you’ve read Until the End, you’ll know that she makes a reappearance at the end, but I didn’t know that whilst reading and I continued to spend most of book 15 continuing to grieve her absence.

She was such a fantastic, beautifully written female terror, only to be replaced by Creed, a bunch of mopey gods, and Valkyrie acting weird. Darquesse is always a joy, but she lacked Abyssinia’s passion, and she was absent for most of this book, too.

As such, the threats in book 15, while cataclysmic and world ending, to me, they didn’t pop as much as the villains of previous books.

Sorrow for China

Despite how many of my favourite female leads seem to step back/be dead in this book (Valkyrie, Tanith, Abyssinia, Darquesse, Malice), China really came to the front which was a joy to see. If anything, this is China’s book more than anyone else’s. It’s the culmination of all her machinations for control as Supreme Mage gone awry, the apex of her time with the church of the Faceless, and her family history come back to haunt her.

She spends a lot of the book being nostalgic, which perhaps betrays that she’s feeling her age. In previous books, there’s always been some doubt over whether China’s actions will help or hinder the main group, but by book 15 she finally felt like a real good guy. I felt like she was ready to act in ways that might cause her disadvantage, and by the end that was proven.

Her final transformation is quite heartbreaking, though not as terrible as her death would have been. China has always been defined by her beauty and her intelligence, and to lose her mesmerizing beauty feels like there will be a necessary change in character to accommodate for this loss. She’s lost one of her most useful tools, and it was something that brought her a lot of joy.

One thing that bothers me about the end of the book, is that so much was changed about the world by Darquesse, but China’s beauty was not restored. I’m not sure if Landy thought it would be cheap to have China lose her beauty without really exploring what that would do to her character, but to me, it felt a bit off that Darquesse would revive Ghastly, Auger, and Tyler’s dad, but not reverse the unfortunate effects of China’s sacrifice.

Like, does Darquesse have a real vendetta against China?

She can revive the complete nobody that is Tyler’s dad, but not help China out a smidge?

It doesn’t really sit right with me, but I’m still looking forward to China’s wrinkly future.

Omen Darkly and Sebastian Tao

Wow. Now this was the heart of my love for this book. I always thought Omen was cute, but in this book he really came alive. This, mixed with the unveiling of the elusive and mysterious Sebastian Tao; I just loved it.

I’ll be honest, I always had a slight crush on Sebastian, and Omen really grew into those shoes over the course of this book. Literally. This was the narrative that had me turning pages and the ending was so beautiful. The reveal had me whining like an injured puppy because of the difficulties I knew Omen was about to encounter as Sebastian, and to know the profound effect that he’ll go on to have as Sebastian with so many people.

I’m glad Auger came back; they deserved to be reunited.

The final pages with Omen standing a couple inches taller than he should at his graduation really pulled at my heart strings. The physical difference is the only clue of the two extra years of effort he had to put in to make things work, without his usual friends or accomplices. It’s changed him, but maybe not for the worse.

There’s still something sad about it, though. There’s a sense of loss, and maybe the feeling that he won’t quite fit in the same with the people he used to know. That’s life, but it still hurt to read.

Stephanie, Valkyrie, Darquesse, The Daughter and the Mother, Skulduggery Pleasant, Cadaver Cain, Malice, Alice, and the Two Sanguines.

And I didn’t even put Kes or Lord Vile in this subtitle. Essentially, I’m starting to feel that the characters of our main duo are starting to blur a bit. At this point, it feels like they could be anyone that the plot requires them to be.

This is a long series and character development is good, but at this stage it sometimes feels less like character development and more like possession. An evil spirit descends and completely controls the character we thought we recognized into something else.

I mean, why am I really complaining? We have about eight characters stashed inside two bodies. Is it that bad? Well, yes and no. Whenever this body comes on stage, I don’t know who or what to expect. It’s unpredictable, and not always in a good way. If anything, I’d say that things are feeling pretty messy.

The Return of Abyssinia?

I hope so? Again, I’m not sure if Darquesse brought her back or not. I’m kind of hoping for more Cadaver bants with Abyssinia. I think they could make the greatest evil power couple that this series has ever seen.

I think the series as a whole hasn’t managed to return to it’s peak, which for me were books 7-9, but I’m still kinda interested in where it can go. Especially since Abyssinia’s back.