'Cirque du Freak' and 'Lord Loss' by Darren Shan

Darren Shan is an interesting phenomenon. He's been on and off popular for years with his 'Cirque du Freak' series, and now with the current vampire craze, kids' books taking off and the film based on the first three books of 'Cirque de Freak', he's regaining his title of king of YA horror. It's kind of sweet seeing kids half my age discovering Shan's books when, nearly ten years ago, I did the same thing. Also, it makes me feel old. This post will be spoilerful because 'Lord Loss' especially has some very dark twists that could do with exploring. Be ye warned: the full impact of 'Lord Loss' will not be felt without the shock factor, so if you're planning on reading it, do so without reading this review first.


'Cirque du Freak' is the first novella in a series by the same name. It features a normal kid named Darren Shan (self-insert? Never) who lives his life and then becomes a vampire through a slightly twisty-turny contrived set of events. That's the entire plot of the first book. It's short and sweet and leaves you wanting more. I certainly recall reading these at a startling rate when they came out, but the waiting period between the books meant I got bored and wandered off. The shortness of them means that they're not really worth the...*goes to look it up*...bloody hell, six quid (!) this costs. Ok, the Angels Unlimited/Agent Angel books are shorter on the whole, but they have so much more substance. These would, however, be a nice undaunting way of getting a kid who is not easily freaked out (especially not by spiders!) and likes a good child-friendly gorefest into reading.

Darren isn't actually much of a Gary Stu. He may have traits in common with his creator, but Darren is a very normal kid (apart from his love of spiders, which frankly I can sympathise with). His friend Steve is much more skilled, smart and knows a helluva lot more about vampires. And he's set up to be a major antagonist. I was, I will happily admit, a very tomboyish teenager. I had long hair and didn't run about climbing trees and playing football, but I have always much preferred books by male writers or about male protagonists. So Darren is pretty sympathetic, but Shan's style of writing irritates me a lot. He's billed as YA now (possibly due to a later occurrence in the 'Cirque du Freak' series or its association with 'The Demonata') but 'Cirque du Freak' is much more aimed at 9-12, imho. The writing style is immature (I assume deliberately), with far more exclamation marks than are strictly necessary, but if I was allowed to tip-ex out 90% of the exclamation marks, it would be pretty much OK.

'Cirque du Freak' starts out slow as most of these kind of books do. We're introduced to Darren's parents, his friends, his sister, his best friend (see above), his teacher, see him at home and school. There is mild mystery when the titular 'Cirque du Freak' is mentioned. It, like the Carnival in Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', is condemned and forbidden by the adults, making it immediately interesting. There is some helpful exposition by the teacher on why freak shows are banned and evil, so at least Shan can't be accused of encouraging kids to attend them, but the real treat is with the 'Cirque du Freak' itself. The descriptions of the 'freaks' are as visceral and shocking as any kid could wish, and the gleeful anticipation is definitely paid off, even if older kids might be blase about the whole thing. The plot continues, a bit oddly, and the pacing kind of totters around a lot, but the book is so short that scenes must be quickly dispensed with and it all leads up nicely to the set up for the rest of the series: Darren becomes a half-vampire to save his friend from the bite of the tarantular from the freak show, and goes off with the delightfully nasty Mr Crepsley to become his apprentice. And in this timeframe comes a beautifully observed scene that had me choking back tears, even at the age of twenty-two. See, the reason we had so much detail on Darren's family and friends? We get to see the funeral from his perspective. As he is in a deathlike but conscious sleep. The pain he feels for making his parents and sister believe he is dead is very affecting, and something rarely explored in vampire fiction beyond a nod.

Of course, he then gets dug up by Mr Crepsley, far and away my favourite character, and taken off to be a vampire. Larten Crepsley barely appears in this book, but he's pretty cool. And don't worry, we'll be seeing lots and lots of him in later books, with a decent amount of character development too. He's not a nice person by any means (as in 'Lord Loss', the adults involved with the supernatural, and therefore the people the protagonists must rely on, are on the whole quite unpleasant), but he grows more likeable as the series progresses. I haven't seen the film of 'The Vampire's Assistant', which is based on the first three books, but John C. Reilly, while a fantastic actor, is a very wrong choice for Mr Crepsley, in my opinion.

So, overall, highly enjoyable, much more suitable for 9-12 year olds than they make out in bookshops, as long as they like big hairy spiders, what is described as 'peril' on those lovely patronising movie ratings and creepy freak shows. I did, and I loved these books. Best to get them out of the library, though, as they're very quick to read.

So, after that (rather longer than intended) summary of 'Cirque du Freak', on to 'Lord Loss'. 'Lord Loss' solidly belongs in YA. It's dark, it's nasty and it's got gore in it that would make some horror writers blush. The setup is the same: ordinary kid of two chess-obsessed parents, sister he has a mildly antagonistic relationship with but actually cares for, friends, school, homework, etc. There are two major differences: this seems set up as a more comedic horror novel, like a zany horror thriller for 9-12 year olds. The main character is called Grubitsh 'Grubbs' Grady, there's a character later called Bill-E Spleen, it all promises zany adventure. The other difference is that the darkness level is set to eleven. Shan says he doesn't write horror but characters in extreme situations, and while these characters are in extreme situations, there's a healthy dose of horror here too. Grubbs, for a start, is already kind of a sociopath. In revenge for something fairly mild his sister verging-on-OCD sister did, he rubs rotten rat guts all over her towel while she showers. Now, I only have one shower a day where she has two or three, and I would find that horrible. If my kid did that to anyone, I'd be putting them into therapy. Grubbs' friend, Bill-E, collects dead animals in a black bin liner as evidence of a werewolf (or so he claims...it might be he just likes collecting dead things).

Of course, none of this matters soon, because Grubbs returns home after being sent off to a friend for some mysterious reason to find his parents and sister horribly mutilated by a demon called Lord Loss and his two hellspawn servants, Vein and Artery, one a demonic wolf with human hands and the other a freakish child monster. Barely escaping with his life, he mans up, goes on wacky adventures and hunts down the demon that killed his parents. Wait, no he doesn't. He goes insane. Like, properly insane. The extended section where he's locked in an asylum is harrowing and creepy, and he doesn't just snap out of it either. Seeing his family gutted, dismembered and hung from the ceiling haunts him for the rest of the novel, and as for Lord Loss, Vein and Artery, he can't even look at pictures of them without being freaked out but he still has to fight them, even as they rip his legs to shreds, and play Lord Loss in a chess match he is almost certain to lose. Yup. It's not just Shan's style that's matured: his realisation of character and the 'extreme situations' he puts them in are so much more monstrous. Sure, it's not subtle: gore's splashed around and it's almost horribly funny when Artery puppets Grubb's sister's corpse from behind, but goddamn if it isn't effective. There's a rather dull subplot about a werewolf in the village Grubb goes to stay in with his uncle, but it turns out to be vital to the main story. And, of course, Dervish Grady, Grubb's uncle, has a more than slightly weird sense of humour. You'll see what I mean at the end of the novel.

This is a gory horror novel on the border of what can class as YA, but it's something that kids will read and will enjoy. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, it's part of a natural progression towards reading adult horror. Still, I always warn people when they buy this book in the shop, and I'll warn you now: it's violent, gory and dark. If it was a film, it'd be an 18, but people are much more willing to accept a violent book than a violent film. Still, it's worth a read, and in many ways better than the 'Cirque du Freak' series.