A Small Matter of Impending Catastrophe

by Derek Landy

The book version of the thrilling and innovative second Skulduggery Pleasant podcast

In 1962, three sorcerers converged to do battle in a hidden chamber near a disused platform in the London Underground. Prophecy foretold that the victor would hold the very fate of humanity in their hands. Since then… nothing.

Now, the people who are trying to find out exactly what happened all those years ago are being murdered – there is a killer coming after them, a killer with a plan – and their only hope for survival lies with Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain.

Because when the end of the world comes knocking, our first line of defence must always be sarcasm.

Unstoppable, withering sarcasm.

Genres: Young Adult

244 pages, Hardcover

Published October 23, 2025

About the author

Derek Landy is an Irish writer and screenwriter. In addition to the bestselling children's/YA series of Skulduggery Pleasant books, a supernatural mystery series starring Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton detective, and Valkyrie Cain, a young female magician, he has written two screenplays that have been made into films: the IFTA award winning "Dead Bodies" and the IFTA nominated "Boy Eats Girl". Landy himself was nominated for an IFTA for Best Script.

He doesn’t like to brag about all the awards he’s won, such as the Irish Book of the Decade, or the Red House in the UK, or all the other awards that he humbly displays on his mantelpiece. He is also far too modest to mention things like the first book being a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year, but would like to extend an invitation to Oprah to pop around one day for tea, in thanks for selecting his book for the Oprah’s Book Club Kids Reading List.

Derek plays too many video games, reads too many comics, and watches too many movies. He lives in Ireland with too many cats. Occasionally he talks to real people, but only when he absolutely has to.

Reviews

[jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

a few weeks ago my therapist asked me about my favourite book growing up and how i think it affected me as a person to which i was like, “Skulduggery Pleasant. Influenced my entire personality and most unfortunately my sense of humour.” to which she was like “Do you wish you were more like Skulduggery.” which i felt was too intimate to get into and i refuse to be psychoanalysed like that.

mostly boring podcast. i laughed out loud every five minutes though cause i’m hopeless and honestly, i cannot imagine a better duo than skul and val. god, they’re so annoying. i wish i was both of them.

[Kenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

or The Importance of Clarifying the Hypothetical Delivery of the Heinous Comment You Want to Make at a Crime Scene

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

he has a gun, she's cranky lmfao

[NEEEVVVVYYY WEEEEVVVVYYY · Rating 5 out of 5]

osvaldo is like the worst ever

[ThatBookMoth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yet again I don’t know what this man is trying to do.
Novel based off of the podcast? Podcast inspired by the novel? Either way this….could have been better.
Haven’t listened to it, honestly won’t, but unfortunately read it.
Again, like in my review for the last “podcast book” this should have been a transcript of the podcast. Not…him trying to write a book. Which is what it is.
You get more of;
-Everyone being obnoxiously dumber than Skulduggery and Valkyrie
-Run on conversations that state the same topic multiple times
-A CONSTANT reminder of what happened in the last arc of the story (I swear every book he rights there’s usually two scenes where a character brings up the whole Valkyrie/Darq killing everyone and a universe reset. That has nothing to do with this story can we please not have it mention yet AGAIN.)
-Valkyrie hitting on at least one girl blatantly even though she has a girlfriend. It’s getting over used in every book and needs to stop.

Now the story? Basically a guys Alexa goes evil and tries to end the world. I kid you not. Oh and the echo stone (said “Alexa”) is the horrible connection from the podcast to book that over explains settings. Yes, this is a handy tool in for the podcast because one of the characters is visually impaired (which is over explained multiple times) and would work well with setting a scene. However in a book? We have the scene described by Skulduggery/Valkyrie then re-explained by the echo stone…….why?
This book can be skipped. In fact I highly recommend it.

[Daisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Four Stars

These audiobook/podcasts are great and I'm really pleased they're clearly doing well enough to make more of them - but they don't really translate into novels. While taking the full advantage of a sound-based medium, using music to solve puzzles and showcasing a low-vision character in strokes of genius, the charm of its performance is mostly lost in translation.

Without space for Derek's token action sequences and environmental storytelling, you end up with a lot of new information shared very quickly in these novella-style stories. I've found it harder to connect with the characters as most of their personality exists in long conversations (minus the voice acting) on the page, and the pure and simple mystery genre misses out on some of the cross-boundary flairs of the main series.

Despite my lower-than-usual rating of the book, I really do enjoy the audio productions and think the episodic podcast style works really nicely. The sound designers, directors and actors all do a fantastic job of bringing Derek's unique humour to life and I'm excited to see what new stories they'll do with it - I would love them to develop into multi-part stories with proper character arcs, as that seems to be the missing ingredient holding it back.

[Nevermore Crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Your lives will be duller without me"

La novelización de la segunda ficción sonora de Skulduggery Pleasant abraza el diálogo rápido e inteligente, el toma y daca fugaz de chistes que se despliegan durante páginas y, aún así, es capaz de darnos un caso divertido que va abriendo boca a la nueva novela numerada que llegará en apenas unos meses.

¿Funciona como novela? Un poco. ¿Está clarísimo que estás leyendo una novelización de un guion? Totalmente. ¿Me la he gozado? Como una bestia.

Hay una escena en la que cuatro magos en una cafetería empiezan a criticar a un bebé diciendo que es feo, la madre se ofende y les pide explicaciones y al final acaba interviniendo el padre del niño para decir que, efectivamente, el bebé es un poco feo.

[Jess Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the podcast for the first six chapters, and then read the book for chapter seven because it wasn’t included for some reason? But despite that, all the voice acting was great, as usual! I really like this more one shot adventures, and the story for this one was pretty interesting! I did start to find Ozvaldo pretty annoying by the end, but Exposition was really cool, a the humour was on point as always - really fun quick read!

[Oscar O'Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the format of these ones, with Skulduggery and Valkyrie whizzing through the lives of a gaggle of eccentric side characters we never have to worry about seeing again. I am curious as to when exactly this takes place given the shock-horror ending of the previous main book, but I’m sure he has or is going to tweet about it.

[Iain Hawkes · Rating 1 out of 5]

While not the worst novel I've ever read, it's easily one of the most irritating.

The characters will not. Stop. TALKING. And most of the dialogue is little more than quips that go on far too long.

[Renaud C Teach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si j'ai tout bien compris, ce roman est l'adaptation d'un podcast donc il est composé à 90% de dialogues... MAIS les dialogues de Derek Landy, entre humour absurde, sarcasmes et cynisme, sont tout ce qui fait, pour moi tout le plaisir de lire Skulduggery Pleasant

Ipso facto, gros kiff !

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good little Skulduggery Pleasant boost

[Daphne · Rating 5 out of 5]

osvaldo is irritating but a unique character. I did guess the villain this time. it was obvious.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well this was fun.

What happened to the end of the world countdown though? I didn't think that had anything to do with Exposition and Amiable.

[Ella Dancey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable, not as enjoyable as the main world stories, I miss the other characters too much but still entertaining, still funny and as always a good read

[J. Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars i thought it was really fun

[Renee Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

[Kim Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one is a bit repetitive in sections and a bit too silly for me with some of the conversations but I've been reading this series for years and I still enjoy the characters and stories.

[David Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Derek, you’ve never written a character with poor eyesight.”
“Huh, you’re right”
*Proceeds to write a blind character who is a conspiracy theory nutjob*

[Rachael O'Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a funny short story. It was a fun read

[Holly · Rating 2 out of 5]

dates not accurate.

you would not have liked this one at all. I'm certain.

[Myfanwy Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Since he no longer has a head that role passes to me. Or you."
"Win, lose, I can wear a hat. That automatically makes me your superior." The funniest things I've read this week, some more top tier humour, although that makes me question my sense of humour.

I was very surprised to get the book a week early but I'm not complaining, looking forward to the new one in March. I enjoyed reading it, unsure of the very end but all in all a great read!

[Daniel Charlton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is Era 3 just going to be a trilogy? Because these supplemental books just feel designed to pad the Era out and give it more content so that it matches up to the first two. I didn’t much care for this one but its got me psyched for the conclusion of the main series with the next book (I mean - for now)

[Abi Pellinor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was also released first as a podcast audio book. I loved when they did that for the Haunting of Hill House, but this one just doesn't seem to be appearing on Apple Podcasts, and I don't have the brain cells to remember to ever get it up on anything else. So, I haven't listened to the audiobook version. I'm sure it's great, but I have read the physical version and had a great time with it.

It's another Skulduggery Pleasant book. It's a lot of fun. What are you expecting here? We have the potential end of the world. We've got high jinks, backstabbing, ridiculous humour, murder, blood, gore, skulls. So much fun. I adore this series so so much. And it's another fantastic entry into it.

I do think that you could read this one as a standalone, but you would be aware that it's part of a larger series and that you were missing some things. You're not missing anything to the story. You're fine, but you're missing like a little bit like some background jokes and stuff. But so good. So good.

[Krish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I quite liked this one, unlike the previous podcast-turned-book, Landy didn't try to overcomplicate things like he does with everything else. That meant a stripped-down standalone story of Valkyrie and Skulduggery solving a case with none of the nonsense that comes with the rest of Landy's convoluted plots. The characters were good, although Osvaldo was very annoying, and the premise worked well enough (ignoring the link to the main storyline), made for a pretty quick, easy, and enjoyable read.