Ugh

I'm losing the will to live with this series, I really am.

I cannot even differentiate in my memory each book, they're all becoming a blur, they're all just so similiar and things happen and resolve so similarly.
This book series feels like a really messy wannabe Dresdan Files.

Something I'm really struggling with is how Valkyrie and Sculduggery have great chemistry and are funny at times, but other than that, they're shit. Why? Because they don't grow, they don't learn, they're super weak as themselves but overpowered as their evil alter egos, they are actually terrible at being the main characters because the only reason they progress or solve things is through sheer luck and contrived writing, most commonly in the form of them turning into their evil alter egos, being invincible, knowing all magic and just swatting their hands aside and lobbing heads off and then they easily return to normal form with zero consequences and nobody having noticed at all.

The bad guys were defeated at the end through this same contrived writing:

Valkyrie went Superwoman Darquesse mode and literally lobbed off the heads of the bad guys and ripped out hearts etc, then Sculduggery did some tapping beat on a surface which made the lights flicker in a certain way to induce a seizure which knocked out the main powerful villain and Darquesse, bringing Valkyrie back from the edge.

This

tapping

shit was developed off-screen and occurred at the end to solve everything, which is straight up disgusting writing.
These books are getting messier and messier as they go along, it hurts my head even trying to point out all the issues. It feels like each book is just bad guy pops up, they save the day, move onto the next book. Nobody is growing, nobody is getting more powerful or learning anything.

Jesue Christ the main bad guy, Argeddian, was a flip floppy interesting villain, while I enjoyed the philosophical undertone pertaining to his character and his motivations (such as being so anti-violent that you cause the very thing you're against, and giving everyone in the world access to magic power would somehow solve everything and stop I balance and war), I really enjoyed all of that and his character. But then Landy made the guy so powerful that the fact he got defeated at all is ridiculous, the guy can literally copy any magic he wants and understands and grasp it instantly, he literally understands magic and it's inner workings like a three year old with savant syndrome teaching itself to read. And yet, he needed to maneuver Scul and Val to go to another dimension to find his alternate reality version to team up with him? Why? Why not just shunt there himself? Why does he even need his other self? He can literally ressurect the dead and he can give powers to people, why couldn't he just take people's powers away and bring it into himself and make himself more powerful?

Landy made this compelling and relatable villain that was super interesting to try to understand, and then gave him so much overpowered powers on that him being defeated at all was absolutely ridiculous.
I'd have wrote his defeat as his beliefs being the very thing that bring his downfall, he defeats himself with his own naivety, make him the source of his own downfall so he could learn his lesson in the end and gain understanding of the nuance of the human condition.
But no,

Scul tapped him unconscious and he got taken away with no tension or battle or anything.

Absolutely ridiculous!

Landy needs to stay clear of theses world ending events and stick to the smaller stories, he needs to make the characters grow and evolve with each book, he needs to make the characters stop being so ridiculously brain dead and stop copying the same bloody formula from book one.

I AM BEGGING YOU LANDY! Pleeaaassse please please for God sake stop fucking this series up and do better, an Irish fantasy series is so unique and interesting and there's so much you can do if you'd stop it with all this dumb lazy shit like love triangles, angsty misunderstood teens and people being evil just because they're written to be evil (at least the villain in this book wasn't that, I'll give him that, but the teens he gave magic to were that, and it was painful to read).
Give us some goddamn complexity, give us some goddamn growth, give us some goddamn little moments, switch up the formula and give us unique moments that are memorable, impactful and connect with us.

The books feel both childish and adult, and instead of it being the right mix, it's a disjointed mess, it should have the humor and hope of a childish book mixed with the darkness and horror of adultness, it should feel like it has depth and complexity because the real world does have the good and bad, the hope and the hopeless, the dark and the light, and people have both inside them. Val and Scul's alter egos and their impact on them should be more, feel more.
All the interesting elements of these books Landy only visits like once or twice per book, instead of honing in on them, fleshing them out and watering them and caring for them to let them grow and bear fruit.

Swear to god the best comparison I can make is Onlyfans, OF people, at least the smart ones, don't show the goods and instead make their whole shtick the big tease, making the consumer believe one day they'll show the goods and they just gotta keep paying per month and waiting patiently. This is what it feels like reading these books, all the best parts are teased to us each book once or twice, and it feels like I'm one of these gobshites still tuning in to see if he'll finally show me the goods, and I'm feeling more and more like an idiot the more I read on.

The best books in this series were the smaller scale stories, it let him develop the characters more and flesh things out. The problem with having world ending events they save the day from is the same problem Marvel is having with their movies: power scaling.
With Infinity War and Endgame having the stakes so high, with galactic armies and half the universe's population being wiped out, it meant after those movies where could they go? What could be bigger than that? They couldn't top it, which is part of why this whole multiverse plot line is so unsatisfying and terrible.
And the Sculduggery Pleasant books have the exact same issue. Most books have a world ending event that needs to be stopped, and because Landy came out swinging with the first book, it means he either has similiar stakes for each book or his attempt at bigger stakes which will have to be topped in the next book, and the next book, and the next book.
With the Dresdan Files books, there's so many of them but the scales got bigger as thenseries progressed, instead of having the biggest stakes at the start. Jim Butcher knew what he was doing and he balanced that really well, Derek Landy either intended this series to be one book or he acted thoughtlessly to its future.

Yes this is a pretty critical review, but I would like to reinforce that I do love these books, with the iconic Irish wit and humor, the wacky but dark world being portrayed, and even the character dynamics, but these qualities are dwindling with each book as the humor becomes less frequent and not as funny, the world doesn't feel like we're getting to know it more and the character's aren't evolving or growing whilst Landy adds more and characters and stops showing some of the best characters.
It's really difficult to bring the positives to light when he keeps drowning them in the negative.

I am moving on to the next book, if it's just another reskin of a half assessed effort I'm actually gonna DNF the series and it'll be my first dropped series and I'll move onto The Expanse, I'm so fucking tired of this author and his bullshit, how can he keep reskinning the book over and over and over again with nobody growing? The only thing that's good is he's not afraid to kill people off, which is so refreshing! But that and the humor is so far the only admirable qualities remaining.