Vile Villain Series - Skulduggery Pleasant Nasties

Jackpot! This week I am blogging about a handful of villains from one of my favourite book series about Skulduggery Pleasant. Each of the baddies are strange and funny, so they are all very unique.

First up, Dreylan Scarab. Scarab goes to jail for almost 200 years and, in the fourth book, comes out an old man. When he is released, he meets up with many other villains and forms a group which they call The Revengers Club. They master an evil plan to steal the Desolation Engine from the Sanctuary, where sorcerers and Grand Mages live. The Desolation Engine is a bomb that makes everything in the same room as it disintegrate. They all agree on stealing it, and that’s where Scarab and his friends turn into real villains.

Billy-Ray Sanguine is Scarab’s son and also a member of The Revengers Club. One of the scary things about him is that he has no eyes. Freaky! When Fletcher Renn meets him in the third book, he just doesn’t know who to trust, a man with no eyes or Skulduggery Pleasant - a skeleton detective. Luckily, Fletcher chooses Skulduggery. Billy-Ray always has a straight razor with him and when it is taken off him he is terribly angry. He wears sunglasses and talks with an amusing accent. Billy-Ray has awesome powers: he can make the ground erupt from underneath him and make secret passages underground!

Next, the hilarious Vaurien Scapegrace. He first appears in Book Two as a sorcerer who wears a tattered coat and he complains a lot. Scapegrace wants to slay everyone in the world, but does not manage to take the life of anyone in his whole woeful lifetime. In the fourth book Scapegrace perishes and becomes a zombie. Yes, a zombie! He cannot use magic like he once could because that is what holds him together. Scapegrace has rotting skin and annoys everyone.

Doctor Nye is a monster. Literally. Not a he or a she, so Doctor Nye is an it. As a doctor, he deals with wounds that need magic to fix them. He steals hearts and in some operations he uses a hedge trimmer.

Darquesse. That name really sounds evil, doesn’t it? Well, in the fourth book, Skulduggery and his gang visit a lady named Cassandra, who takes them to The Steam Chamber. There, she shows them a vision which includes a female Necromancer, Darquesse. They see that Darquesse will destroy the world, and they see themselves, too. She wears black and is like a shadow. She is a state of mind. There is more, but I won’t reveal it or it would ruin the story for you. All of the Remnants love Darquesse. Remnants are ghost-like creatures who crawl inside mouths and take over one’s whole being. When inside, they have the person’s memories, but Remnants are not nice.

Dusk is a bloodthirsty vampire. He is pale and strangely beautiful, and calm. Dusk is bad at night and at day, unlike some of the other vampires. The transformation of him becoming a vampire is horrific. He rips his skin off, but not all of it wants to come off so that he ends up with a dreadful appearance. Dusk has a massive scar across his face from Billy-Ray’s razor. Since he is a vampire, he holds massive grudges and he never gives up until he spills blood.

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There is still time to sign up for the 2015 MS Readathon. Register now at www.msreadathon.org.au and join me for a whole heap of fun for a good cause.

(Image: Illustrated by Tom Percival from www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk)