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Darren
Shan was
a normal
kid:
rash,
reckless,
out for
a good
time —
especially
if the
thrills
involved
sneaking
out at
night.
Then he
went to
a
performance
of the
Cirque
du
Freak,
stole a
vampire's
pet
tarantula,
and had
to
choose
between
life as
the
half-vampire
assistant
to a
creature
of the
night,
or
seeing
his best
friend
die. So
began
The Saga
of
Darren
Shan.
Shan the
author
has a
way of
presenting
Shan the
character
with
terrible
conundrums.
Usually,
it's a
moral
dilemma:
someone
has to
die so
that
someone
else may
survive.
Sometimes
it's a
matter
of
personal
ethics,
as in
Book
Two,
where
young
Darren
must
overcome
his
horror
of
feeding
on human
blood,
or
slowly
waste
away and
perish.
It's all
in
keeping
with
Shan’s
desire
that
life be
presented
in a
realistic
way,
despite
the
supernatural
cant to
the
stories
his
books
contain.
It's
also
part of
the way
Shan
incorporates
a
brilliant
system
of
allegory
into his
tales,
the
blood-letting
and
impossible
creatures
he
describes
standing
in for
the more
conventional
agonies
and
confusions
of
adolescence.
These
books
are good
reading
for
young
adults,
but
older
audiences
will
find
something
to
admire
in the
layers
of
significance
each
crucial
moral
dilemma
Darren
faces
are
engineered
to
include.
In the
current
case,
young
Darren
and his
best
friend
Evra (a
snake
boy)
accompany
the
tight-mouthed
vampire
Mr.
Crepsley
to a big
city on
a
mysterious
errand.
Darren
makes
friends
with a
girl
named
Debbie
(thus
continuing
the
trend
from the
earlier
books
that
interesting
and
meaningful
guest
characters
will
crop up
to give
Darren
the
chance
to touch
their
lives —
usually
for the
worse —
and
learn
something
from the
choices
he makes
and the
ways
those
decisions
affect
others)
and
tries to
explain
his joy
at the
notion
of being
someplace
where
they
actually
celebrate
Christmas.
As the
holiday
approaches,
and
Debbie's
family
warm up
to
Darren
enough
to
invite
him over
for a
Christmas
Eve
dinner,
it seems
that
Darren
will
have the
chance
to avoid
the
Yuletide
Blues
and
enjoy
himself.
Then —
with
perfect
timing —
the
bombshell:
bodies
have
been
discovered
stashed
in a
warehouse.
Bodies
sucked
dry,
Darren
is
alarmed
to note,
of all
blood.
Suddenly,
Darren
has
another
of those
horrific
dilemmas
in front
of him.
If
Crepsley
has come
here to
kill,
then he
has to
be
stopped
— and
Darren
will do
the job
if need
be. But
what
will the
cost be
to the
young
half-vampire
if he
kills
his
mentor?
Darren's
rash
course
of
action
serves
only to
complicate
the
issue,
endangering
Evra and
Debbie
in the
process,
and
confronting
him with
an even
more
diabolical
moral
crossroads.
Before
Christmas
Day
dawns,
Darren
will
have to
choose
who
among
his
friends
lives —
and who
dies to
feed a
monstrous,
ancient
entity
run
amuck
with
evil.
The
author
observes
his
habitual
care
here to
make the
stakes
real and
the
process
of
resolution
anything
but
facile.
In fact,
just
when the
reader
thinks
he's
caught
Mr. Shan
preparing
to
borrow
from a
founder
of
vampiric
lore,
the film
maker
Murnow,
the
author
deftly
turns
things
around
to take
even his
jaded
readers
by
surprise.
But
there's
always a
balance
struck
in
Shan's
books
between
soaking
the
proceedings
in gore,
and
keeping
events
from
spinning
entirely
out of
control,
and here
too the
bright
red line
is
walked
with a
sure
step:
life,
Shan
seems to
argue,
is a
dangerous
proposition,
but
manageable
for
those
who meet
it with
open
eyes and
keep
their
wits
about
them.
That's
as good
a moral
to his
stories
as any
one
could
hope
for.
Rating:
4 out of
5.
http://www.wigglefish.com/zine/reading/reviews/cirquedufreak3.html |
