darkSpyro

So Cynder and Zook go to a holiday beach called the Cloudless Desert, and they're joined by Hex who manages to scare them all away with her arrival. Eon's spotted something up at the Cloudless Desert, so they look up...only to find that it's not so cloudless. Long story short, there's a storm, they get out of quicksand, the book refers to the evil Cynder period as "indulging the dark side of her personality" (aka she chose to be evil then, unlike Hex), and there's weird weather all over the place.

After that, Eon tells the group that there's been a distress call from the Isle of the Undead, so the guys head out there straight away. And straight away, they're attack by spiders and gargantulas and moon widows and stump demons. We get a questionable picture of anthro Cynder before the stump demon (called Dogwood) turns out to be on their side and it and its ghost help fight off the huge legion of spiders. Getting to Mayor Morbo the Macabre, they find out about the weather wizard, Hurrikazam. He's making beauty in the isles (it's a bad thing) and wants pies for tributes from the denizens. When it's not fulfilled right away, he starts taking some ghosts. The guys try to stop him, but fail. So much so that Hurrikazam just zaps Cynder after she tried her hardest to bring him down. Oh well.

Morbo gives more exposition after the weather wizard goes away for a bit. He reveals that once the ghosts are taken, they disappear forever, except one spirit so far. The guys demand to see the one who managed to return, and Morbo leads them to him, warning them that they can turn back whenever they want. The shocking sight is a normal Mabu. While seeming cute and fluffy, the Mabu used to be a skeleton called Rib Cage. Apparently in the wizard's cloud is a factory that can turn disgusting into nice and, even more impressively, the undead into the living. Hex notes that this should be impossible and is wary of it being legitimate. Even moreso, Zook notes that he heard of Hurrikazam on his travels and only ever heard nice things about him. This is a strange change of attitude.

Our heroes make a plan; they let themselves be captured by gargantulas so that they can be taken to the weather factory. Cynder is rendered dizzy by the tornado, but when she lands she hears a familiar voice; it's Brock, who last showed up in book three or something! He heads and some other undead off, and apparently the smell of flowers is disgusting to Cynder. In the room with the conveyors and the device, she sees Hex again and spots the weather wizard, a tiny, nervous man who's scared of bugs (not the giant cloudhead from before). The machine indeed turns the unfortunate spirit into a living being, but it takes the undead energy from him to do it.

Due to shenanigans, Zook is spotted and Brock starts an offensive on him. The heroines join in and it becomes an all out fight between the heroes and drow forces. After they're dealt with, they go to deal with Hurrikazam...who's glad to see them here? He reveals that he's been held prisoner and forced to do these awful things. Then the real man behind the curtain reveals himself and it's none other than, who else, Kaos! The guys go to attack him but Hurrikazam, still in danger from Kaos, throws a switch to send them up in a gust of wind. This actually makes him fall into despair.

Kaos summons Glumshanks who's carrying a flower which seems to change colour all the time. This is the Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible, Surprising, Unfathomable, All-Coloured Rose, and the book does not let you forget this name. Anyway, the AFISUAC Rose only blooms once every 100,000 years and is the only one of its kind. This is the bartering tool that Kaos has used to keep Hurrikazam in line. His big plan; to drain the energy of every undead soul, then sending out the undead energy into clouds and raining it over the Skylands so everyone becomes an undead and every other element goes kaputt. Kinda dark.

Kaos wants Hurrikazam to continue on with the operation, but the wizard grows a spine and refuses because the people are worth more than the rose. After some threatening, Kaos cuts the flower and takes control of the machines himself. Brock accidentally triggers a switch which cuts off the wind, and the heroes are free. More fighting ensues, the wizard is reluctant to take part until he call plants stupid, after which he uses his moustache to throw more switches, messing up the process and halting the weather effects. More fighting ensues.

Cynder is about to land a final blow on Kaos when Hex jumps in to defend him. She traps Cynder in a bone fortress and looks like she's betraying the Skylanders for a chance to reverse the curse that makes her unapproachable to normal people. She puts emphasis on how powerful her energy is and Kaos decides to go with it. She goes in the machine and Kaos starts it off. However, Glumshanks spots an issue; she has so much power that the machine is starting to overload. Cynder becomes aware of Glumshank's concern and realises that Hex is faking her face turn. She in fact is letting her own energy destroy the machine so that it can no longer be used for Kaos' evil scheme. She's actually briefly a living elf again...before Hex reveals that it's just an effect of the extractor and she turns back to undead in a snap, saying that she embraced her undead identity. All we find out of old Hex is that she had dark emerald skin and dark eyes. What a tease!

The un-undead become undead again and fight off the drow army that's left. Our heroes and Hurrikazam follow Kaos to the wizard's botanical garden. Kaos assaults them with flowerpots, while an oak tree starts to turn back into Dogwood, the stump demon from earlier. Cynder tricks Kaos into going near him for the special seed he's looking for. He and Glumshanks get a beating before they retreat. Back at the Isle, Brock and Hurrikazam apologise for their actions (Brock was said to be working for the wizard earlier), and Hurrikazam offers to build the undead a weather machine to guarantee bad weather, which Morbo accepts. Hurrikazam is happy to live there, then Morbo offers to let Hex live there as well. She declines.

In the last pages, Hurrikazam directs Brock to Rumbletown, and gives Cynder a seed for a new AFISUAC Rose (are those the ones in the hub world that change colour based on what element goes past, by the way?) as well as the undead part of the mask of power. They try to contact Master Eon, but he doesn't seem to be responding. Hurrikazam uses a portable weather machine to make a storm that takes the three back to the Eternal Archives. There, Spyro and Hugo reveal that Squirmgrub has gone, and so has Eon; it looks like he was kidnapped! The end.

Okay, two points;

1. How was Kaos planning to rain undead energy all over the Skylands if it couldn't even contain all of the undead energy available? You'd need a lot of it to affect everyone.
2. I don't see how Rattleshake is undead, despite being the undead element. It looks more like he summons the undead to do his bidding, but otherwise is very much alive.