Attack of the Fiend (The Last Apprentice Series #4) »

Joseph Delaney lives in Lancashire, England, in the middle of boggart territory.

"I see your future clearly. Your master will be dead, and you will be alone. It would be better if you had never been born."

Thomas Ward is the apprentice for the local Spook, who banishes boggarts and drives away ghosts. But now a new danger is threatening Tom's world: the witches are rising and the three most powerful clans are uniting in order to conjure an unimaginable evil.

Tom and the Spook set out to stop the witches before they unleash the demon. But when Tom finds himself on his own, he wonders if he has the courage and cunning to defeat the most powerful enemy he has ever encountered.

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8- Apprentice witch-hunter Tom Ward and his master, the Spook, must now travel into deep enemy territory. The three witch covens of Pendle Hill have been at odds for a long time, but somehow they've been persuaded to put aside old enmities. The aim of this unholy alliance is no less than raising the Devil himself. The key to defeating the witches may rest in a set of trunks willed to Tom by his mysterious mother, but they have been stolen by the Malkin clan, along with Tom's older brother and his family. Delaney does a good job of tying in information from previous books, but the prosaic writing style means the story only occasionally achieves an atmosphere of excitement and dread. Still, fans of the series will welcome the surprising revelations and further questions unveiled in this chapter of the tale.-Christi Esterle, Parker Library, CO