I enjoyed the shift to a detective story and a sort of smaller scale. The writing, dialogues especially, doesn't appeal to me as much as it used to (maybe because it feels a bit too much of a trick?). Skulduggery in perticular was a bit grating in his all-powerful-intelligence-ness. 

One conversation about a character being trans was... well-intentioned, for sure, but came off quite ham-fisted and not the best way to phrase things. I don't know if Derek Landy used a sensitivity reader but it might be an idea for future tomes? I get that that dialogue was handled as "this is the way the author does dialogues and so many of his characters speak that way" but in this instance there are other, less clumsy ways the topic could have been brought about.

At least the plot was more self-contained while providing interesting hooks for "phase 3" as a whole, and it gives me more confidence in the future of the series.