Skulduggery Pleasant

Weird books for younger readers are cool. Today I've head some radio show at work, it had people call in to complain about kids nowadays for some reason, I don't even know why. One was this very disgruntled lady who for some reason complained about kids caring about creepy spooky, weird stories and she sounded like that was the worst thing ever.
Me, though... I think it's something we definitely need. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that kids aren't idiots and that they just think in a different way. Now everyone seems to be just so sensitive and so many people can't deal with things, but children normally don't look round and see the world as this endless sea of offensive and horrible things they should panic about and while I am no expert, I would assume them hearing about the morbid is important.
This is why I love for example Darren Shan; he does weird, scary and genuinely dark things in a way that is accessible for younger readers. Now many of you will probably say his writing is not good and all, but I love how he has the guts to tell children about dark stuff in a way that is not condescending, because they can handle it.

In that sense this reminds me of his writing; one of the protagonists, Stephanie is 12. To enter the world of magic she needs to accept that it means she will have to live in a world much darker and scarier, but she is not surprised in this naive way, where we are supposed to believe 12-year-olds don't know violence and death exist.
The other protagonist is... a walking, talking, magic using human skeleton. With style. Seriously, Skulduggery is hilarious and sarcastic, so much fun. He doesn't baby Stephanie, which is exactly how normal, real children want adults to be around them.

The story itself isn't anything too special so far, old enemies showing up and Stephanie happens to get caught up in a war that started long ago. A bunch of characters and concepts introduced to us, but that's fine when the series is a collection of so many shorter, easy to read novels. Perfect to get the attention of the reader, to get us into it. It's obvious things will get more complex later on and I can't wait for it.

I would definitely recommend this one, it's an easy and extremely fun read. I'm already halfway in the second book, which is a big deal when I normally don't read books of a series right after each other.

Good night and look in the closet for the skeleton!