Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare by Darren Shan.
Title: Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare.
Author: Darren Shan.
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, horror, YA, vampire fiction.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2000.
Summary: A young boy named Darren Shan and his best friend, Steve, get tickets to the Cirque Du Freak - a wonderfully gothic freak show featuring weird, frightening half human/half animals who interact terrifyingly with the audience. In the midst of the excitement, true terror raises its head when Steve recognizes that one of the performers-Crepsley-is a vampire! Soon, Darren and Steve are caught in a deadly trap, and Darren must make a bargain with the one person who can save Steve. But that person only deals in blood.
My rating: 7.5/10.
My review: This is a really good example of solid quality young adult lit. I didn't have a very strong emotional connection to the books (as I do with Harry Potter, for instance), probably because I'm only reading them now for the first time, and the main target audience is adolescent boys, but it is nonetheless obvious to me this is a well-written book. As a vampire novel, it manages to hold its own, which is pretty difficult to do, seeing how vampire novels (especially of the teen variety) has literally choked the book markets in the last decade).
♥ The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books, the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything comes good at the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up hunky-dory.
In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall out of a tree, you break some bones.
Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.
I just wanted to make that clear before I began.
♥ If this was a made-up story, it would begin at night, with a storm blowing and owl hooting and rattling noises under the bed. But this is a real story, so I have to begin where it really started.
It started in a toilet.
♥ "I'd love to go," Tommy said sadly. "It sounds great." He studied the picture again.
"Mr Dalton didn't think too much of it," Alan said.
"That's what I mean," Tommy said. "If Sir doesn't like it, it must be super. Anything that adults hate is normally brilliant."
♥ "Are you scared?" I asked Steve.
"No," he said, but I could hear his teeth chattering and knew he was lying. "Are you?" he asked.
"Course not," I said. We looked at each other and grinned. We knew we were both terrified, but at least we were together. It's not so bad being scared if you're not alone.
♥ Imagine: a real-life vampire! I used to believe they were real but then my parents and teachers convinced me they weren't. So much for the wisdom of grown-ups!
♥ "You know what I love?" he asked "I love people who watch lots of horror movies and read horror books. Because they believe what they read and hear, and come packing silly things like crosses and holy water, instead of weapons which could do real damage, like guns and hand grenades."
"You mean.... crosses don't... hurt you?" I stammered.
"Why should they?" he asked.
"Because you're...evil," I said.
"Am I?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "You must be. You're a vampire. Vampires are evil."
"You should not believe everything you are told," he said. "It is true that our appetites are rather exotic. But just because we drink blood does not mean that we are evil. Are vampire bats evil when they drink the blood of cows and horses?"
"No," I said. "But that's different. They're animals."
"Humans are animals too," he told me. "If a vampire kills a human, then yes, he is evil. But one who just takes a little blood to fill his rumbling belly... Where is the harm in that?"
♥ When I was on his back, he started running. I didn't notice anything odd at first, but soon began to realise how fast buildings were zipping by. Mr Crepsley's legs didn't seem to be moving that quickly. Instead, it was as if the world was moving faster and we were slipping past it!
We reached the hospital in a couple of minutes. Normally it would have taken twenty minutes, and that was if you sprinted all the way.
"How did you do that?" I asked, sliding down.
"Speed is relative," he said, tugging his red cloak tight around his shoulders, pulling back into the shadows so we could not be seen, and that was all the answer he gave.
♥ I couldn't let that happen. I wouldn't. My life was no longer important, but those of my friends and family were. For their sakes, I would have to travel far away, to a place where I could do no harm.
♥ And that was how I came to enter a new, miserable phase of my life, namely - death.
♥ And then they buried me.
♥ "Are you ready to go?" he asked.
"Give me a minute," I said. I jumped up on one of the taller headstones and gazed around at the town. I couldn't see much from here but this would be my last glimpse of the place where I had been born and lived, so I took my time and treated every dark alley as a posh cul-de-sac, every crumbling bungalow as a sheikh's palace, every two-storey building as a skyscraper.
"You will grow used to leaving after a time," Mr Crepsley said. He was standing on the stone behind me, perched on little more than thin air. His face was gloomy. "Vampires are always saying goodbye. We never stop anywhere long. We are forever picking up our roots and moving on to pastures new. It is our way."
"Is the first time the hardest?"
"Yes," he said, nodding. "But it never gets easy."
"How long before I get used to it?" I wanted to know.
"Maybe a few decades," he said. "Maybe longer."
Decades. He said it as though he was talking of months.
"Can we never make friends?" I asked. "Can we never have homes or wives or families?"
"No," he sighed. "Never."
"Does it get lonely?" I asked.
"Terribly so," he admitted.
I nodded sadly. At least he was being truthful. As I've said before, I'd always rather the truth - however unpleasant it might be - than a lie. You know where you stand with the truth.
♥ I nodded nervously and squeezed his hand. We turned and faced away from the graves. Then, side by side, the vampire and his assistant, we began walking...
...into the night.