The first time I heard of this book was when my youngest child became obsessed with the movie adaptation, and while the movie is a fun story, it was nothing compared to the book. I read it to him as a bedtime story but soon found myself extending our storytime because I fell in love with the book.

It follows Sophie in much the same way as the movie at the start. She works in a hat shop, is her family's oldest child, and becomes cursed. While wandering in search, she comes across the wizard Howl's castle and makes a deal with Calcifer.

Unlike the movie, however, Sophie has two sisters and Howl is infatuated with one of them. She stays on as a cleaning lady, just like in the movie, but this is about where the similarities end.

As I said, the movie was fun, but the book has so much more in it. The magic, while slightly less spectacular, it has so much more depth to it. The adventures that occur give so much more life to the world and make you so much more invested in everything that is happening.

I recommend this book highly to anyone and everyone, for it has something in it for everyone out there. 

I will do my best to keep this spoiler-free for this book, but if you have not read up to this book already, I would reccomend not continuing further than this sentance. 

I began this book as soon as I finished the previous one simply because I needed to know what happened next. If it has been a while since you read Dead or Alive, I will remind you that at the end of that book Valkarie became the Child of the Faceless Ones. In terms of cliffhangers, this particular cliff hanger took the case. Not since Darquesse have we seen such a dramatic moment in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, so obviously I needed to see how the author handled this drastic alteration in Valkarie's character.

The last time he did something like this, with the appearance of Darquesse, the next book actually began with Stephanie, or Valkarie's reflection. That was an interesting way to do it. It allowed us to see the world through slightly different eyes, but he would not be able to do something like that again since Stephanie died, nor would it even make since to do something like that. 

Within the first few chapters of the book it gave us a wonderful answer to this question though. It was intriguing how he chose to do this, and even gave me some insight into how some people in the real world. 

I read Marissa Meyer's book, Fairest, earlier this year and the way that Derek Landy wrote Valkerie as the Child of the Faceless Ones character reminded me somewhat of how well Marissa Meyer wrote Levana in that book. For those of you that are unaware, Fairest is a prequel book to Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series. It follows the events that led to one of her antagonists rising to power, and more interestingly, it follows the events from the perspective of said antagonist. It is a brilliant way of showing how the protagonist of a book does not neccesarily have to be the good guy or even the person that you like, yet you still need to read on.

While Derek Landy was not forced to write a villain and make you like them, he did put himself into the position of writing someone going through something that was entirely out of character for them. The feeling I got from reading the first half of this book was very much the same feeling I have when I am watching someone make poor decisions and being powerless to stop them because they believe themselves to be right.

Moving away from Valkarie for a moment. Another thing that you may recall from the ending of the previous book is the fact that the Faceless Ones have begun returning. Not only that, but what happened to Ogre, and what are Sebastian and Darquesse doing? If you have theories about either of them, I will tell you now, you are probably wrong. I had my own theories, and it was fun to watch as my theories changed and then I discovered most of them to be wrong.

Derek Landy writes his Skulduggery books in trilogy formats, so once a third book comes out you know that all the events will be coming together to answer almost all of your questions before giving you new questions to ponder as you finish the final chapter.

Thus far trilogies have ended with the Faceless Ones coming to our world and then being sent away along with Skulduggery himself, The Necromancers trying to end the lives of billions with their Death Bringer, Darquesse believing she destroyed everything in the universe then going off to fight the Faceless Ones, and an actual Kaiju battle. 

If you, like me, have no clue how Derek Landy can surprise us anymore, then I would love to see your face when he does it once more. 

At the end of the day, I am still so happy that I discovered this series, and I am lookng forward to whatever he does next.