Skulduggery Pleasant – Last Stand of Dead Men

Derek Landy's Last Stand of Dead Men is a big, dark and very funny fantasy for 11 year olds, with war coming to the world of sorcerers.

What happens

It's the eighth Skulduggery Pleasant book, so start at the beginning if your reader hasn't yet. This one assumes they know everybody already.

It opens with Valkyrie and two bickering Monster Hunters knocking on a witch's door at night. Skulduggery is trapped in a chalk circle in her cellar, and he's quizzing her anyway. Even stuck, he can read the old witch's face so well that she covers it with her hands (it doesn't help).

What he finds out is bad news. The Warlocks, a secretive and very powerful kind of magic user, are planning a war. Meanwhile the other Sanctuaries have run out of patience with Ireland and are sounding more and more like they want a fight of their own.

Valkyrie turns eighteen in this book, and her birthday is a highlight. Her dad sings the same cheeky birthday song he's sung every year. Her parents give her a bright orange car, which she immediately decides looks like an Oompa-Loompa. Then Skulduggery turns up with a case before she's even had her girls' night out.

Has he bought her a present? Of course not. He asks whether her parents love her a car's worth.

That's the joy of these books. Huge, world-ending stakes, and right in the middle of them a row about a birthday present.

It's worth knowing that this sits at the very top of the shelf. Valkyrie is an adult now, and the book's worries are grown-up ones, with politics, a coming war and a girl getting dressed up for a night out in town. There's plenty of fighting and talk of killing. An old teacher of hers gives her a more powerful ring for her dark magic, and the rush she gets from it is a little bit worrying.

For a reader who has come all the way through the series, it'll be a must. For one who's only just met Skulduggery, the earlier books are a much better fit for now.

What to read next

If the talk of war and powerful grown-ups scheming behind closed doors is what grips them, Northern Lights is waiting for them. Lyra hides in a wardrobe at her Oxford college, watches the Master tip a white powder into her uncle's wine, and hears the servants whispering that a war might be coming.