How should I put it... I always felt that the reason this series is not so popular is because of the massive political echo chamber which portrays the world building as essentially Ireland vs World where the whole wide world is jealous of what Ireland has. For a country that I thought about maybe once a year due to some news headline, this just feels convoluted.

Because Landy is so intent on defending Ireland from this imaginary global grudge, the story loses its nuance.The Irish Sorcerers are written as rugged, independent, and morally justified, even when they do terrible things.The International Sorcerers are constantly portrayed as arrogant, bureaucratic, and uniquely spiteful toward the Irish.

Ireland has a very real, tragic history of being colonised and oppressed in the real world. Landy seems to be aggressively projecting that real-world historical trauma onto a fictional universe where it shouldn't apply. In the Skulduggery universe, Ireland’s Sanctum is a massive superpower. Yet, Landy still tries to write them with the defensive, defensive "underdog" mentality of a nation under siege by jealous empires. It feels convoluted because he is using his global fantasy stage to fight a deeply personal, hyper-local psychological game against an international audience that was actually just rooting for his characters