Skulduggery Pleasant – Apocalypse Kings

Derek Landy's Apocalypse Kings is a fast, funny, spooky Skulduggery Pleasant story for 11 year olds about a boy who opens the wrong box.

What happens

Adedayo is terrible at debating, wary of cats and runs away from wasps. Then things start flying at his head. Lamps, bottles, heavy books. His grandmother moves in and tells him the truth. Magic is real, she's magic, and so is he.

When she dies, she leaves him a carved wooden box that nobody can open. Weeks later, in the middle of the night, he suddenly knows how. Out climb three ancient gods called the Apocalypse Kings. They look round his bedroom, announce that it smells of feet and vanish.

The next afternoon a girl he's never seen walks into his maths lesson and talks him out of the room. She's Valkyrie Cain. Waiting in the car park is her partner, Skulduggery Pleasant, a detective in a sharp suit and hat who happens to be a talking skeleton. Adedayo screams. That seems fair.

Then the Kings turn up at his school, hungry for souls, and the two of them go undercover to find them. Skulduggery as a supply teacher is the funniest thing in it. He calls himself Mister Me, wears one tasselled hat after another (Valkyrie keeps setting fire to them) and gives a history lesson nobody asked for.

The banter between Skulduggery and Valkyrie is brilliant, and Adedayo is a lovely, very normal hero who just wants to get to the loo in peace. It's a short, standalone story, so your reader doesn't need the main series to follow it.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Adedayo and Valkyrie are teenagers, older than the children usually on this shelf. The Kings feed on people by taking them over, and there's a properly creepy chase through the school when a possessed girl comes after Adedayo. His grandmother's death comes early and is quite moving. It's more thrilling than gory, but it is scary in places.

For a reader who's nervous about possession or monsters in ordinary places, it might be one to save. But if they like their magic funny and a bit dangerous, this is a perfect first taste of Skulduggery.

What to read next

If they're hooked, the first nine Skulduggery Pleasant books are all together in one collection, starting with a girl called Stephanie at her uncle's funeral, where a stranger in a scarf and sunglasses is watching.