The Holy Terror

A possible retreat from goodreads ... though I'm tempted to yell "get off my lawn" at this site's tumblresque-ness. Yes, that's totally a word.

A Living Nightmare (Cirque Du Freak, #1) - Darren Shan This is an older series and many of you may have read it years ago or already decided it wasn't for you, but maybe my review will sway you into giving it a chance (or just make you remember how much you loved it.)Here's my take on things:Be prepared for a male author with all male main characters. There's a younger sister character with a small part and I enjoyed the siblings' relationship, but aside from her and a few mothers, this is mostly a series about boys. Did that bother me? Not at all. Just pointing it out.Lots of gore, which I enjoyed immensely. Also, some deadpan humor thrown in so it wasn't completely gross and disgusting all the time. It was a nice way to break things up so it didn't feel dark and bleak every step of the way.The story is short and intense and doesn't contain a lot of filler. I can see how this might get compared to the Goosebumps series because those were quick reads too, though I'd say this series is for a slightly older audience, but if these had been around when I was 10 or so, I would've gobbled them up.Not a whole lot of surprises, you can kind of see where things are heading early on, but the few surprises that are included are pretty big ones. There's also a scene in the beginning that doesn't get explained and I'm curious to see where things go with that. I love that Shan obviously planned this as a series but still wrote a full book. Things are left open-ended, but there's not really a cliffhanger and I appreciated that.This is a short gory book with a slightly new twist on the vampire mythos geared heavily towards male readers (though I think girls won't feel alienated at all) and the inclusion of a "freak show" is something fascinating and I welcomed reading about a topic done to death (heh) that ended up still feeling unique. I really liked it and already have the next book loaded up on my Kindle (though I'm trying really hard not to start it tonight ... must ... wake up ... early ...)I can see how this series is so popular now and hope the quality continues with each subsequent book. Also, if you liked this book and this series, definitely check out his other unrelated series, The Demonata; I really loved the first book and I can tell you that reading A Living Nightmare after Lord Loss that his writing only gets better.It's really neat to watch an author progress and continue to improve and also clearly enjoy his work. There are not a lot of authors writing stories like Shan's and I think it fills a nice pocket that fans of the Goosebumps series can stick their hand into once they start getting older. I definitely would've been one of them and I can't wait to dive deeper into the rest of his series.

Currently reading

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Melissa Grey
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette
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