Embrace your creed

Alhamdulillah,
this is my second post labelled 'Book reviews' and I really don't do a lot of reading.  I'm trying to get use to reading since my ambitions involves creative writing.  I believe that you have to get inspirations from many resources; relying only on television isn't much of a good idea.  To be frank, I feel really good about myself because I don't read a lot of novels and to finish this one which I've spent more than a month is really satisfying.  I'm a pretty slow reader you know and I bet if I would to tell a regular book enthusiast that I spent a month reading a 300 page book, they would laugh.  By the way, here's the first post of Book reviews: Comics (DMZ Friendly Fire and World War Hulk)

I stumbled upon this book's wikia about a year ago and the main character's design fascinated me.  What makes it more fascinating is that there's rumours that there's going to be a movie adaptation of it and so, with those two facts bearing in my mind; I bought the book.  It was sort of serendipitous--well, not really; spontaneously stumbling Mumford and Sons's Sigh No More album was serendipitous because I tried to looked for it for 3 years.  They're not popular in Malaysia so it was difficult to find it.  I found this book when I was working at MPH Bookstores and since I get 20% off as a result of employee discount; I figured, why not just buy it? So, the story is a combination of detective and magic though I didn't felt much of the detective part.  It felt more to a "secret magical society living in our modern world" kind of plot.  Did that made sense? I hope it did.  Maybe it's just me but the story definitely focus more on explaining the secret magical society's history rather than emphasizing the crime solving.  The story starts with an adolescent girl who got herself involve in a secret world when she investigates the curious death of her uncle.  Stephanie Edgley met Skulduggery Pleasant, a walking skeleton with good taste in fashion and highly mannered, while sticking up her nose in this awfully dangerous world and thus, causing them to be good friends.  In my opinion, this book focuses more on the magical world's history.  Don't get me wrong, they are plenty of investigations going on but with the Faceless Ones and The War being told; it just screams out history to me.  To know more about the Faceless Ones and The War, buy the book! It's good--I mean, I don't read a lot of novels but it kept me reading; that proves something, doesn't it?

It's too sketchy, don't you think?

What I love about it though is the main character, Skulduggery.  He's the kind of character with a vast vocabulary and manners; a fine combination of making a gentleman.  I love smooth talking characters, they look just so cool and fascinating to me.  They could give low IQ villains a hard time understanding them with their choice of words.  Plus, it makes you sound more intelligent! He's also funny.  He makes intelligent jokes which I always choose over slapstick and dirty ones.













Another character's appearance that caught my attention was Ghastly Bespoke.  Now, I didn't saw a picture of him before I read the book.  After I read it, he's description was sort of weird to me.  A man who had a boxing background thus leading him to have a strong upper body strength; big arms and muscular all over.   But be that as it may, he chose to be a tailor instead.  He's background and physical appearance is quite a weird one.  He's face is said to have many scars; an unpleasant sight to be seen.  But official artworks of him didn't click with what I expected.  So, I made a sketch of my own.



 


I admit, Ghastly's appearance is quite hard to execute and this sketch of mine didn't satisfy me.  Instead of scars, I gave my version stitches.  Seeing the movie adaptation of him would be fun to see how they made him into reality.



Now the question for me is will I buy the next book? Well, of course but not now.  I'm going to college soon so I need to save money.  Besides, I have loads of other things to buy and so I guess, I would probably buy the book next year.  Thankfully, this book wasn't a waste of money and I give it a 3 out of 5 for a good read.  It's the first instalment; there are loads of story introduction in which I presume the next books should be good with it being build up.



Lately, I haven't been posting sketches of my own design a lot but now, alhamdulillah, I've finished part one of my short comic! :D


I'll post it soon, Insya Allah and I'll be hoping for some constructive criticism.  










That's all for now, Salam and have a good day everybody!