Still ostensibly seeking his fated mortal confrontation with the Vampaneze Lord, half-vampire Darren Shan gets distracted: forced by a paper-thin plot device to attend school, he meets an old girlfriend, now aged into one of his teachers. The short attention spans of both author and narrator guarantee a haphazard story filled with plot holes, clichéd contrivance, and whiplash-inducing emotional swings.