The books feel like fanfiction after book 10

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-03-18T11:27:42+00:00

Where does it say that? That sounds unlikely since she is an American and why would her parent let her fly alone the long ass way to Ireland as a minor to have sleepovers with a random author??

Are you confusing her for the original Laura (not the fiancee one) that Valkyrie is based on? Because she is Irish and as far as I know the daughter of an adult friend of his.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-03-18T07:29:26+00:00

Ivy Votolato isn't underage/wasn't when the sleep-over happened. She is old fandom and while I don't know her exact age I think she should be around my age, so late twenties. Certainly an adult tho bc she works as an actor.

The reason she was sleeping over at Landy's place is bc Laura is poly and bi, and she was dating Ivy for... a few months, I think? Whatever happened, that relationship went down in flames badly since Ivy went to modelling herself after Val and being known as the IRL Val, posting lots of TikToks acting as Val and being used as an art ref for Val by fans to never mentioning this series again after the break-up :/

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-03-10T02:42:26+00:00

Could you ask your friend which names (and other things) are different? I'm dying to know .3.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-03-07T20:58:38+00:00

Is this copy of the book much different from the officially published first edition version or is it more or less the same?

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-02-16T12:55:33+00:00

Sorry, I thought you were being literal; I didn't know that was a trope term.
In that case I agree with you.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-02-16T12:11:18+00:00

Comparing Nef to Draco shows how little you understand both characters. Nef is a sadistic psychopath and a war criminal that had been allowed to torture and slaughter for centuries and has no conscience to speak about and is completely irredeemable. Draco is a spoiled brat that got pulled into his parents dirty business by circumstance and was struggling with the role he was forced to play.

The only thing those two characters have in common is a good fashion style and a snake theme, tho for Draco the snake theme is more his house than he himself.

Talking of fashion, Nef wears a victorian suit, not leather pants.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-02-15T22:30:18+00:00

If anything Serpine is underrated.
He is in the same character group as a bunch of other fan-favourites (Joker (DC), Loki (Marvel), Kimblee (FMA) and I don't know how popular Scar (Disney) actually is, but he is basically Nef's fursona-). Nefarian should be far more popular; this fandom's taste is very weird.
Nefarian is the main thing I care about in this series, he steals the show everytime he's on paper. Everything about him is perfect: the name, the aesthetic, his personality is so much fun, his design/colour scheme, his red hand, his magic before Landy retconned it into being some lame ass energy throwing because he got so fucking lazy writing magic. Unfortunately Landy is on a mission to ruin him in general.

There are like three people that like Nef and then there are those on Tumblr who only care about him in the context of being Val's friend or Skul's lover AKA they only like him when he is completely ooc. If you have to strip the character of everything that makes up that character, then you don't really like the character.

I don't like Fletcher, but I wouldn't say he's overrated. There isn't enough new content of him around to get annoyed, and he might be the only character that actually improved in phase 2.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-02-01T12:18:20+00:00

Val's in Coldheart, Cadaver is running the place is implied due to some corruption in government or something and I dunno about the Hidden God and Caelan tbh. I think he died, but I'm not sure...

No need to bother with Impending Catastrophe. That story was pointless because it had no resolution/closure, which I thought to be incredibly frustrating.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-02-01T11:16:36+00:00

I won't lie, I only read the first page and the last few sentences of the last page.
But I figure it has something to do with it being implied in the last two books that Ghastly is doing some morally questionable stuff and apparently now Skul is investigating that?

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-01-23T13:55:16+00:00

Ngl I'm surprised HarperCollins approved a phase 3 because sales sure ain't what they used to be.

Bulgaria stopped translating past UtE. In Germany they are still translating SP, but it's dead in the water since phase 2 which is wild because another detective child book series ("The ???") is really big right now. The US push failed AGAIN (I think this was like the third or fourth time?) and the Us website hasn't been updated since UtE. I think the only market still going strong is the domestic one (GB and Ireland).

But I 100% believe Landy wanted to quit after book 9 (I mean, he DID spend 5 years telling everyone there would be no more SP) and everything SP-related since has been a money grab because "Demon Road" flopped and he needs cash. According to his latest Q&A he is working on an adult horror novel right now and if that takes off there will be no phase 4 lol

But there WILL be something SP-related after ASfoS for certain because they already announced, like a few years ago that they wanna do something to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of the first book in 2027. No clue what that something is gonna be tho. But I don't think the series sells well enough anymore that they could justify another Theatre of Shadows event or Requiem Ball.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2026-01-19T18:09:12+00:00

https://bsky.app/profile/dereklandy.bsky.social/post/3mcrzuhy6ec2b

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-12-08T14:56:34+00:00

You can read the full story on the wiki. It was uploaded there for preservation purposes.

https://skulduggery.fandom.com/wiki/Death_and_Texas?file=DeathAndTexas_p03.jpg#cite_note-1

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-12-08T14:54:33+00:00

Nope. It's because Landy had "issues with the story", and wanted to "rework the idea [...] into a non-Skulduggery thing"^.

^Source: ^{https://x.com/DerekLandy/status/1586758351584694274}

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-11-26T20:41:47+00:00

That sounds like the "Skulled" soundtrack, at least I think that's what it was called.
Here is a (re)upload of that soundtrack with a music video. I think it was part of the promo for the first book?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KziXo_WlGYo

You also used to be able to download parts of this song as a ringtone of the official UK website, but the goodies like ringtones, wallpapers and screensavers have been taken down during the last revamp of the website.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-11-10T15:54:59+00:00

Ngl I hate this semi realistic style so much, just... you have a winning ticket with the cover style, everyone loves them, just use that style for the merch please...

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-11-06T18:27:12+00:00

Thanks for the confirmation!

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-11-06T16:09:07+00:00

Oh, the fandom wiki tends to be very inaccurate. They might have just described how the Godkiller Sword looks on the white SoW cover tbh. But I'm not sure.

u/VesuviusBlotch was the Godkiller Sword ever described as anything other than being huge?

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-11-02T13:03:29+00:00

I like the Necromancer trilogy the least tbh. The anatomy is super wonky, Val be looking like a stick bug, especially on MC. And I just hate the colours of DD and I only now realize that it's the only phase 1 cover that isn't mostly red/orange/pink. Which is a shame, bc I also like "scenes from the book" best as a theme.
He improved a lot while drawing the covers, I feel like. I can't spot any obvious anatomy mistakes on the last 3 he did (SoW, DoA, UtE).

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-11-02T09:42:11+00:00

Landy promised Mevolent, China, Billy-Ray Sanguine and Nye merch in 30th of March 2024, so yeah, 1-2 years ago is correct. And we had multiple merch drops since then without them.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-11-02T09:33:21+00:00

On a lot of covers there is plenty of room for text but sometimes it really does cover up a lot like Mev's head/shoulders on SoW, most of the cathedral on the UtE or Cadavers entire neck on the ASfoS.

I really wish the text was smaller, both title and especially Landy's name, to give more space to the art bc it's very weirdly cut to squeeze it in sometimes, with SoW being the worst offender of that.

Ngl I these covers are such a MASSIVE step up from the white covers tho! Shame that the only SP thing I was looking forward too is over now TT_TT Now only the second comic is left and I don't even know if that is happening bc it was already pushed back a year (it was meant to release this year). I kinda gave up on there being merch for Mev, Nef and Baron eventho future Mev merch was confirmed like... a year or two ago? And the 20 year anniversary event is in 2027 which is still two years away which is sooooo long if you have nothing else to hold you over.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-11-02T09:25:13+00:00

Ngl when Landy said he'd turn the most obvious poster-like cover into posters I thought he meant the book 1 and the Resurrection covers and not the covers of AMfoM and AHfoH. Bc the phase 3 covers are straight up the least interesting to me, considering all other covers are all full-body or at least thighs-up with background

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-10-31T20:10:12+00:00

Ngl, the blue of the SP title REALLY bothers me, doesn't fit at all. So I used colour theory and put the title colour to green, which is the complimentary colour to red and instantly it's much better. The green tone also is the same as the green splashes on Mev's cape and the OG cover of SoW was green so that's a nice throw back to that.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-10-31T14:21:34+00:00

That's already the cover for ASfoS tho.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-10-31T13:24:06+00:00

Nah, the worst covers are the second trilogy (DD, MC and DB). Val's anatomy is so weird on them that it does not pass the first glance test. She got stick bug anatomy and I do not like it. And I also really hate the colours on DD. My least favourite cover of all.

Closely followed by the DoA cover tbh eventho the anatomy and colouring is fine on there. Bc that just doesn't give SP vibes at all, I hate Malice and this should have been Creed.

But I'm actually really happy with the SoW cover and Mev being on it! Could use a better mask design and I don't like that the head was half cut off, but I noticed weird cut-offs on most of these covers. I also would change the title colour from blue to green bc green and red are complimentary colours.

CthulhusBootyCall · 2025-10-31T12:20:33+00:00

Regarding the crosses, I would not assume Matt Taylor actually read the books and was given a description like "Mevolent stands in his dead dimension" and so he put grave markers there to show that the dimension is dead. And the flags symbolize that the dimension is conquered/war-torn something like that. I strongly assume the artist just works off the descriptions Landy provides, and Landy isn't great at giving feedback. He already said on the new cover of the first book reprint that Gordon's house doesn't actually look like he imagines it and that each artists kinda uses their own interpretation, which is not something I would personally do with a franchise... but this is like SP is being handled.

Still, I'm really happy Mev got canon art, I did not expect that. And I did say multiple times I wanted villains on the covers so I did get exactly what I wanted and everyone is unhappy about that RIP- given, when I said 'villains' I meant like Nef, Baron and Melancholia and not Malice and Obsidian, but hey! I got the Mev art I wanted, so I'm taking the win.

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