Skulduggery Pleasant recap

When her uncle Gordon, a horror novelist, dies suddenly, twelve-year-old Stephanie Edgley inherits his house and estate and meets Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton detective who investigates Gordon's death and reveals that magic is real. Attacked at Gordon's house by a man demanding a mysterious key, Stephanie becomes Skulduggery's partner, takes the protective name Valkyrie Cain, and begins learning Elemental magic. The killer is Nefarian Serpine, once a lieutenant of the dark sorcerer Mevolent and the man who tortured and killed Skulduggery during the war. Serpine is hunting the Sceptre of the Ancients, a weapon that can destroy anything and that was once used to drive out the Faceless Ones, the dark gods who ruled before mankind. With help from Tanith Low, Ghastly Bespoke and the information broker China Sorrows, Valkyrie finds the Sceptre first, and it binds itself to her. Serpine takes it, captures Skulduggery and attacks the Sanctuary, but Valkyrie recovers the weapon and kills him with it. She goes home, tells her parents nothing, and stays on as Skulduggery's partner.

Gordon Edgley, a rich and successful writer of horror novels, dies suddenly, and his will leaves his house, his fortune and his estate to his twelve-year-old niece Stephanie, to the loud disgust of the rest of the family. At the funeral and again at the reading of the will, Stephanie notices a stranger in a long coat, hat, scarf and sunglasses who says almost nothing and leaves without explaining who he is. Staying alone at Gordon's house during a storm, she is attacked by a man who demands that she hand over a key she has never heard of. The stranger comes back and drives him off with fire, and when the fight is over he takes off the disguise: there is no face underneath, only a skull. He introduces himself as Skulduggery Pleasant, a detective, and tells her that magic is real, that a whole hidden world runs alongside the ordinary one, and that her uncle did not die of natural causes. Gordon was murdered.

Skulduggery tries to send Stephanie back to her parents and fails; she insists on being part of the investigation, and he gives in. He explains how magic works: sorcerers are broadly either Elementals, who command fire, air, water and earth, or Adepts, who specialise in stranger disciplines, and their affairs are governed by Sanctuaries, with Ireland's run by three Elders. A generation ago a war was fought against the dark sorcerer Mevolent, who wanted to bring back the Faceless Ones, the dark gods who ruled the world before humanity. Mevolent lost, but several of his lieutenants survived. Skulduggery also warns her that names carry power: the name you are given can be used against you, so sorcerers take a name of their own choosing as protection. Stephanie chooses Valkyrie Cain. The obvious suspect in Gordon's murder is Nefarian Serpine, who changed sides at the end of the war and was never punished for anything he did during it. Skulduggery takes Valkyrie to Ghastly Bespoke, a scarred tailor who makes her clothing stitched with protective magic.

Valkyrie begins learning Elemental magic, starting with the basics of air, and meets more of Skulduggery's world: Tanith Low, a sword-carrying young sorcerer from England who can walk up walls, and China Sorrows, who keeps a vast library, sells information to whoever pays, and is magically impossible not to love. From them and from Gordon's own notes, the object everyone is chasing takes shape: the Sceptre of the Ancients, a weapon made by the first sorcerers and used to drive the Faceless Ones out of the world. It has been a legend for centuries, but Gordon had been researching it seriously, and the key Serpine's man came for is part of the route to where it lies. Serpine's servants, including Hollow Men, paper-skinned things filled with foul gas, come after Valkyrie more than once, and it becomes clear that Serpine believes she has what he needs.

Skulduggery brings the matter to the Sanctuary, where Grand Mage Eachan Meritorious and the Elders Morwenna Crow and Sagacious Tome are reluctant to move openly against Serpine, whose truce is protected by treaty. Valkyrie learns why the case is personal for Skulduggery: during the war Serpine had his wife and child killed and then tortured and killed Skulduggery himself, and Skulduggery came back from death as bones held together by magic and rage. Other interested parties circle the investigation, among them Mr Bliss, China's enormously strong brother, whose loyalties nobody can read. Serpine's attacks escalate, and Valkyrie is nearly killed more than once while she is still barely able to control the magic she is learning.

Working from Gordon's research, Skulduggery and Valkyrie reach the underground chamber where the Sceptre of the Ancients was hidden. Valkyrie is the one who takes hold of it, and because she is the first living person to touch it, the weapon binds itself to her and will answer to nobody else while she lives. It fires a black lightning that destroys whatever it strikes. Serpine's forces take it from them, and Serpine now has a servant nobody expected: a Sanctuary Cleaver, killed and brought back in white, silent and relentless. Skulduggery is captured and taken to Serpine's castle, where Serpine sets about repaying, at length, the centuries of pursuit. Valkyrie is left with Tanith and Ghastly, the Sanctuary in disarray, and no way of knowing whether her partner still exists.

Valkyrie, Tanith and Ghastly go after Skulduggery. Serpine, meanwhile, moves against the Sanctuary itself: his Hollow Men and the White Cleaver overwhelm its defences, Cleavers die, and the Elders are pushed to the edge of defeat. Serpine's aim is not merely revenge on the people who forced his surrender. He wants the road opened for the Faceless Ones, and with the Sceptre in his possession he believes nothing in the world can stop him from doing it. Skulduggery is found broken and scattered by what Serpine has done to him, and it falls to Valkyrie to reach the Sceptre before Serpine can finish what he has started.

Valkyrie recovers the Sceptre and uses it on Serpine, killing him and ending both his plan and the long debt owed for Skulduggery's murdered family. The Sanctuary survives, but the attack has shown how thin the peace after the war really is. Skulduggery is repaired and back on his feet, and Gordon's murder is closed. Valkyrie goes home to parents who still believe she has spent the summer tidying her uncle's house, and she chooses not to go back to the life she had: she keeps the name Valkyrie Cain, keeps training as an Elemental, and stays on as Skulduggery Pleasant's partner. Gordon's house and everything in it, including his research, are hers now. The Faceless Ones remain out there, and Serpine was not the only one of Mevolent's people to survive the war.

Valkyrie gets the Sceptre back and uses it herself, killing Nefarian Serpine and ending the threat he posed to the Sanctuary, to her family and to the world Gordon died trying to warn people about. It also settles, at least partly, the debt owed for the murder of Skulduggery's wife and child and for Skulduggery's own death during the war. Skulduggery, badly damaged by his captivity, is put back together and returns to work. The Sanctuary survives the attack on it and the Elders remain in place, but the ease with which Serpine reached them has shaken everyone's confidence in the peace that followed the war. Valkyrie goes home to Haggard and to parents who know nothing about any of it, and she decides that she is not going back to an ordinary life: she stays on as Skulduggery's partner, keeps the name Valkyrie Cain, and continues her training as an Elemental. Gordon's house, his fortune and his research are hers. The Faceless Ones remain a distant threat rather than a defeated one, and Serpine was not the only one of Mevolent's people who survived the war.