Challenge REVIEW, Darren Shan

The Oldest Book on the Shelf Challenge

Hosted by Hell & Purgatory Book Reviews

(now, Cosy Up Book Reviews)

It’s not a must and is all about reading this books you never got around to reading, in, like, forever and so....

    Prod dets

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant

Series: the Saga of Darren Shan, omnibus, book 1, 2 & 3

Pub: 2003, Harper Collins (individually published 2000)

Author: Darren Shan

Genre: paranormal horror

Format: paperback (mid); 511pp

Age Range: YA

            Synopsis

DARREN SHAN

CIRQUE DU FREAK • THE VAMPIRE’S ASSISTANT • TUNNELS OF BLOOD

Darren Shan is an ordinary boy, until he and his best friend Steve visit the weird and bizarre Cirque Du Freak, where they come face to face with a creature of the night. Then Darren has to confront his deepest fears and sacrifice everything as he enters a darker world to become the vampire’s assistant....

Featuring the first three adventures in the internationally successful series The Saga of Darren Shan.

            Thoughts

Okay, so I got this book...hell, to long ago that I can’t even remember anymore. I think it had something to do with the Lightning Thief, or at least that’s what’s always ringing in my head when I think about it.

Anyway, the point of my buying this book isn’t important, not really, I do know that I actually rented the movie of the book but only managed to get through the opening credits before it became too much for me.

I’m not sure what I was expecting out of the whole thing, but clearly not what I got. And that’s a shame, because even though I only read the first of these three stories (really, not a horror person, and I couldn’t get myself to read three in a row—sorry) and it wasn’t that bad, and it could have become a killer movie series if they hadn’t trying to make the thing look like a lollypop and daisy Disney version of something that should have had a creepy chill down your spin that flittered out into coolio dances of a killer horror movie for YA.

Cirque Du Freak

Darren goes to a banned freak show with his bestmate Steve. It’s the wonderfully gothic Cirque du Freak where weird, frightening half human/half animals appear who interact terrifyingly with the audience. Darren – a spider freak – ‘falls in love’ with Madam Octa – an enormous tarantula owned by the circus proprietor. Darren determines to steal the spider so that he can train it to perform amazing deeds. But his daring theft goes horrible wrong. The spider bites his best mate and Darren has to sell his soul to an evil vampire to get the antidote.

This book takes us into the world that he’s about to live in.

Going to...yeah, you can read the above to figure it out, the blub isn’t a lie.

It’s odd looking back on what I had just read, it’s not that I didn’t like any of the characters, but I didn’t particularly like them. I think that came more to the points of the fact that it’s not a long book and it is defiantly a series. It’s got all the telltale signs of a follow book when you reach the end.

It comes down to facts that I just didn’t get into it as much as I think it should have because it’s just not my thing, I can’t do, read horror—hell, I can hardly watch them (which is odd, ‘cause I absolutely love scaring the shit out of myself, especially when walking, in bushes, at night (there’s a lot where I lived growing up))

It had an interesting part with Steve, his best mate, and oddly, creepy from the start, very self-centred and damaged beyond belief. There’s reason behind this, that we learn this. But it’s also something thatis needed to centre the series and creates a problem in Shan’s future.

Anyway, despite the fact that it wasn’t my thing, I would recommend this book to anyone I thought might like it. The writing and voice threw the novel was brilliant and easily followed.

Vampire Assistant

Darren joins the vampire, Mr Crepsley, as his assistant and they return to the Cirque du Freak. There, Darren makes friends with the snake-boy, Evra Von (who knows what Darren is) and a local boy, Sam, and RV, an eco-warrior and animal lover (who do not). Darren begins to enjoy his life among the Cirque performers as the youngest half-vampire in existence, but he defiantly refuses to drink human blood -- the whole idea sickens him -- and he tries desperately to cling on to the part of him which is human. Darren comes face to face with pure evil in the form of Mr Tiny, the leader of the Little People who join the Cirque du Freak, and who eat anything -- including human flesh. When he discovers animal bones, RV frees the wolf-man from his cage -- and no-one could possibly guess how truly terrible the whole effect would be.

Tunnels of Blood

When Mr Crepsley is called upon by the Vampire Generals, Darren and the snake-boy, Evra Von, leave the Cirque Du Freak and travel with him to the city. Whilst there, Darren meets Debbie and his life as a Vampire's Assistant fades into the background—until corpse are found. Corpses drained of blood... Suspicious of Mr Crepsley's secretive behaviour, Darren and Evra shadow him across the city and confront a creature of the night who may be the end of them all... Has Darren made a fatal mistake which will cost him the lives of those he cares for? And can he escape the lure of the Tunnels of Blood?

Series

[tb], [tb], [tb], Vampire Mountain, Trails of Death, the Vampire Prince, hunters of the Dusk, Allies of the Night, Killers of the Dawn, the Lake of Souls, Lord of the Shadows, Sons of Destiny

☼☼☼