Last Stand of Dead Men

Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 8

By: Derek Landy

Narrated by: Stephen Hogan

The eighth instalment in the biggest, funniest, most thrilling comedy-horror-adventure series in the universe – and the follow-up to 2012’s number-one bestseller, Kingdom of the Wicked…

War has finally come.

But it's not a war between good and evil, or light and dark – it's a war between Sanctuaries. For too long, the Irish Sanctuary has teetered on the brink of world-ending disaster, and the other Sanctuaries around the world have had enough. Allies turn to enemies, friends turn to foes, and Skulduggery and Valkyrie must team up with the rest of the Dead Men if they're going to have any chance at all of maintaining the balance of power and getting to the root of a vast conspiracy that has been years in the making.

But while this war is only beginning, another war rages within Valkyrie herself. Her own dark side, the insanely powerful being known as Darquesse, is on the verge of rising to the surface. And if Valkyrie slips, even for a moment, then Darquesse will burn the world and everyone in it.

©2013 Derek Landy (P)2013 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Sooooo Funny

This book was so funny I loved it and the way it ended on a cliffhanger was epic ness!!!

The books no longer feel like individual titles so much as chapters in a larger story

I’m not sure what to make of this one. I’m so near the end and yet it feels like I’ve been standing still for the last few books. I think that’s down to each book lacking it’s own personality. There’s nothing here to make this book feel like its own distinct entry in the series - it’s just “more”. And yet somehow that makes it feel less.

The worst part of it is that this is the book that finally made me start disliking he main characters. They are committed to a status quo that has proven disastrous for the world, something the villain calls out. The villain’s plan doesn’t make a ton of sense but he feels like the only “alive” character in this whole thing, and the only one dealing with the actual bad things in the world rather than clinging to conservatism. He acts unselfishly while the protagonists endanger everyone for their own ruthless and wrongheaded personal gain. It’s strange and I could support that as a narrative choice if the book didn’t seem to lack awareness of how selfish Stephanie, Valkyrie and Pleasant all behave. In the end, (spoiler alert) the villain is punished with unceasing torture that feels grossly disproportionate to his crimes, while the rest of the supporting cast debates harshly punishing all those who supported his ideas, including children. I just can’t grasp what the point of this whole thing was - maybe the final book will make sense of it, and I want to give it the benefit of the doubt since overall I think Landry understands that his protagonists are villainous deep down, even if he depicts it cartoonishly and doesn’t really dig into their personal flaws as much as he could. Maybe this is going somewhere.

I still wish it had stood on its own, though.