Skulduggery Pleasant – Mortal Coil

Derek Landy's Mortal Coil is a darkly funny, properly creepy fantasy for 11 year olds, set over one very strange Christmas in Dublin.

What happens

It's a later book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series and leans hard on what's gone before, so a newcomer should start with the first book instead.

Valkyrie Cain is sixteen now, and Skulduggery has a new trick. A magic face slides over his skull whenever he needs to pass for human (although it doesn't always stay put).

But Valkyrie is carrying a secret. She's found out something terrible about her own future, and she can't bring herself to tell Skulduggery. The only one she confides in is her uncle Gordon, or rather a recording of his personality that lives in a glowing blue stone in his old house. So she plans to slip away, without telling her partner, and find a banshee who might be able to help.

There's a case to crack as well. A detective who went bad is on the run, and a huge assassin in a metal mask is hunting her down.

It's a big, busy book, and the family bits keep it warm. Valkyrie's mum is expecting a baby in February. Valkyrie's already sure it'll be a girl and is worrying about how you're even supposed to hold one. Her boyfriend Fletcher can teleport, so he nips to Australia for ice cream in the middle of an Irish winter.

The funniest scene might be Skulduggery's face sliding off while he's driving. He has to hold his nose in place and asks her to tell him if they're about to crash into anything.

Some of this is grim, though, and it's worth knowing about. Early on, Skulduggery and Valkyrie walk into a house full of murdered people, one with his head twisted all the way round, and find a single terrified survivor hiding in a wardrobe. Later there's a horrible scene where something evil is forced down a man's throat so it can take him over.

If your reader is unsettled by bodies or possession, it might be one to come back to. If they love a shiver with their laughs, there's plenty here.

Valkyrie's worry feels very real too. It's the kind of secret that's too big to say out loud, and she keeps hoping she can fix it before anyone has to know. Haven't we all done that at some point?

What to read next

For more chatting with the dead, The Graveyard Book makes a lovely next step. A toddler who's escaped a terrible night wanders up the hill to the old graveyard, where Mr and Mrs Owens, dead for a few hundred years, have to decide what on earth to do with him.