Book Review: Last Stand of Dead Men

Summary: 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.

Thoughts: Ah! Everything went wrong! I mean, if it could go wrong, it did! So much happened! I don't even know where to begin! 
 Ok, deep breath; first off,  this is the eighth book in this series so if you haven' read the first seven books you'll be completely lost with this one, they're aren't stand-alone books. 
 On the other hand, if you're already up-to-date on the previous seven then this is a must read for any fan of this series. 
 The characters, old and new were great, just great. The dialogue was hilarious and had me laughing, sometimes even when the story had me crying. 
 The story was the best. So many twists and turns I never saw coming! It was awful and fabulous all at once!
 The writing never fails to hold my interest but the scenes of fighting and war were especially good. For being such a violent series, Landy never forgets to point out that violence, especially unnecessary violence, is never a good thing. He keeps a good perspective going throughout the entire book and usually left me fuming or crying. But, of course, only a good book can make you feel so much.

Content: Ok it's almost all there for language: D***, C***, and H*** are a few of the more noteworthy words used. There is a scene where many female witches are shown dressed like belly-dancers basically. In same scene same witches talk about 'breeding' with a male hostage of theirs. There are a few implications or rude comments made but these are usually let unclear as to whether or not anything inappropriate was intended. There is a lot of violence, natural and magical. Blood and gore in excess. There is also tons of magic being used and some of the more frowned upon magical creatures show up in here, vampires and witches mainly. SPOILER In the end, a female character attempts to save people by burning herself alive from the inside. This is attempted suicide (with heroic intentions but still) coupled with the fact that her clothes are burned off. There were some fairly graphic descriptions of her dying but EXTRA SPOILER she doesn't and is therefore left with nothing on for awhile.END ALL SPOILERS.
So, all in all, despite being marked as a children's book still (for reasons I will never understand or agree with) this is definitely one for the older crowd. It's not a clean read and I won't pretend that it is but it's not as horrible as the condensed Content has a tendency to make it sound. If you've enjoyed the last several books Last Stand of Dead Men will not disappoint!