Darkmouth 3 – Chaos Descends

Shane Hegarty's Chaos Descends is a monster-hunting adventure for 9 year olds about a boy whose sneezes set off the microwave.

What happens

Ten months ago Finn learned that he can ignite. Explode, that is, with enough force to flatten everything nearby. He found this out by doing it.

It left him with a scar across his chest and a small ongoing problem. Cough too hard and the television changes channel. Sneeze in class and a sprinkler system three rooms away soaks twenty-five children and two hamsters (nobody ever works out why).

Otherwise Darkmouth has gone quiet. No Legends. No gateways. The cliffs where the last one closed are under tall grass now.

Finn is nearly thirteen, which is the age an apprentice Legend Hunter becomes Complete. He's dreaded that ceremony his whole life. So is he finally off the hook?

He is not.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

A Half-Hunter called Douglas takes a hotel room, lays out his knives on the bed, and turns round to find something in the corner made of writhing tar and scars, with eyes full of blood. He swings a carving knife straight through it. Then it takes him. There's no blood and no body, but it's a horror-film scene and it's early.

If your child is fine with that, the rest is mostly very funny. Finn's training session ends with him splitting his shorts. His dad insists nobody can see. Half the Half-Hunters in the world have won raffle tickets to watch him train, and one of them is eating popcorn.

Reading it, you get the feeling of being the least impressive person in a very famous family. The corridor to Finn's house is lined with portraits of Legend Hunters, including a great-grandfather known as Gerald the Disappointed, and they all look like they're judging him.

His mum has the best line in the book. Just remind yourself it won't be like this forever, she tells him. She's been saying it to herself every day since she married in.

What to read next

This one sits well into the series, though, and it opens ten months after a trip to another world that it never stops to explain. Start at the first Darkmouth book instead. It's in the library, and Finn is twelve in it, hopeless at fighting, running through the rain from a Minotaur in a suit he made himself.