One word: Yikes.

Yeahhhhh what the hell was Derek Landy thinking with this book? He's clearly trying to age up the series, but the way he went about it was ironically in the most teenage drama bullshit way.

So, I rarely add content warnings to my reviews, but some stuff was so jarring and prevalent here it needed to be added, especially going from the tone of the previous books.

The brain-dead love triangle between Valkyrie, Fletcher and Caelin continues and escalates in this book, to the point where

Valkyrie is actively cheating on Fletcher (and is portrayed by the author as something okay and normal, please don't normalise cheating for fuck sake) despite her being icked out completely by Caelin's behavior, age and the fact he's a skin-jacketed Vampire. He's extremely possessive and obsessive and she just finds it annoying as opposed to how troubling it clearly is. She's literally only cheating with Caelin because she thinks he's hot and dangerous!? give me a break! you couldn't have added some depth to this situation??? Fuck off Landy!

I've noticed the past couple books that Landy has been turning Valkyrie into Rory Gilmore, where she's written and portrayed really unlikeably because of how she treats people and

cheats on them

and is so selfish, it's literally the Rory Gilmore effect, and in this book it reached it's peak.
I absolutely hate reading Valkyrie, I really do, she's no longer the endearing funny but brave girl, she's condescending, arrogant, abusive, selfish and careless with other people and their feelings and doesn't care about anyone but herself. She consistently puts her baby sister in danger and rarely shows concern for others, unless she feels scared of herself turning evil, in which case she then suddenly cares for the sanctity of human life.

Also, Valkyrie doesn't even seem to have grown in terms of combat and magical ability, I swear the older she gets the more weak and helpless she becomes, how is it she was more badass as a child and now when she's almost 18 she consistently gets her ass kicked and overpowered. We don't see her casting new spells or doing new magic tricks or learning and evolving at all, despite having one of the most learned elementals (and most powerful necromancer) as a mentor, and all he necromancy magic is tied to that ring. I wish we'd see more elemental magic tricks, instead of just pushing air to make someone stumble backwards.

By far the best characters in this book were Fletcher and Skulduggery, the character development was brilliant, equally. I loved the scenes where Fletcher

stands up to Valkyrie and despite his understandable anger towards her, is still selfless and good enough to put his feelings aside to fight by her side or help save her from being killed.

He's the real MVP of the book and I'm so proud of his development and how he went from being so self-centered to being a true member of the team.

Skulduggery, holy shit, the twist half-way through the book was on par with the infamous Darth Vader father confession twist, it was completely unexpected and yet fits perfectly, adding whole new layers of depth to Skul's character. It was absolutely brilliant.

As for the plot itself? Atrocious.
Another world ending event on the scale of the first couple books, which is really predictable and exhausting now. I loved the previous book because the plot's stakes were significantly lower than a world ending event but it was done in a unique way that still built stakes and kept us on edge and provided many ways to explore the plot.
This book however, was just plain boring. We know straight away that

3 billion people aren't going to be killed by the Death Bringer and life and death walk side by side together,

it's obvious, it's like how certain stories won't kill off certain characters and they have massive plot armour which removes the stakes of combat and risk of death. It wasn't exciting, it wasn't interesting, it made me slip more and more towards the scale of a reading slump. Usually if the plot is weak we have the character dynamics and development to keep us entertained, but this seriously felt lacking in those two departments, apart from Skulduggery and Fletcher's developments.

This, so far, is the worst book, and has me considering not continuing the series.
I'm giving the next book a go, but we better stop seeing Rory bloody Gilmore in these books and stop it with that lazy childish love triangle shit.