I’m a big fan of Skulduggery Pleasant.  After only two books in the series have been released (the last one in April of 2008), I’ve been anxiously awaiting the next tale of the skeleton detective and his plucky teenage sidekick, Valkyrie Cain, as they try to thwart Lovecraftian monsters from invading our world.  So every couple of weeks I’ve been checking the Skulduggery Pleasant website, or Googling the name, to find out more information about the new book, The Faceless Ones (the name of the Lovecraftian beings in this series).

Yeah, I know it’s a Young Adult series, but it reads as so fun, you find yourself not really caring, just enjoying the story.  I WISH I had a series like this to get into when I was younger!

So, when I saw the announcement that Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones, I was beside myself with excitement:

Third bone-breaking, belly-busting adventure in the series that puts the “funny” back in…um…funny series. That didn’t really work, did it? If you’ve read the previous Skulduggery books then you know what the Faceless Ones are — and if you know what the Faceless Ones are, then you can probably take a wild guess that things in this book are going to get AWFULLY sticky for our skeletal hero and his young sidekick. If you haven’t read the previous Skulduggery books then what are you doing reading this? Go and read them right now, so that you know what all that stuff in the previous paragraph was about. Done? Good. So now you’re on tenterhooks too, desperately awaiting the answers to all your questions, and instead you’re going to have to wait till April to get hold of the book. Sorry about that.

Sure, it was the announcement for the UK edition of the novel, which typically comes out a week or two before the US edition, but it said April!  Which, given the fact that the first two were released around that time frame, made sense.  Still, it was listed on Amazon.co.uk, but not on Amazon.com.  No biggie, I thought.  It just got announced, after all.

Then time passed, we’re in February, a mere two months before the book is set to be released, and still no listing on Amazon.com!  And, kind of surprisingly, the official website hasn’t been updated to reflect the new book information, when at least the UK site should be.  Actually, around this time last year, I was getting my Advance Reading Copy of the second book (Playing with Fire) so that I could send in a review before the book was released.

So this morning, I was on the Harper Collins website, and it lists the US release date of Faceless Ones as 08/25/2009.  WHAT?!?!?!?  Four months after the UK release date?  How fair is that?

I’ve tried contacting Harper Collins about being able to talk to the author, Derek Landy, about the book before it’s release, to help get the word out a bit, but haven’t heard back yet. And now, Amazon.co.uk has removed the release date of the book, and is just showing a “This title is not yet released,” tag, which typically means there’s been a delay of some sort.

So, anyone out there in TVLand know what’s going on with Skulduggery?  I’d really like to get my hands on the new book and continue the adventures of my favorite skeleton detective!  Post in the comments below!