A Living Nightmare (Cirque du Freak, Book 1)

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Summary: Cirque du Freak - Circus of Freaks
Review: This book is about a boy named Darren Shan. His best friend Steve got 2 tickets to the Cirque du Freak. Darren and Steve goes and in this one performance, there was a performing spider named Madam Octa and its owner, Mr. Crepsley. Steve was right about Mr. Crepsley, who is a vampire. Since Darren likes spiders, he decides to steal it. What do you think after he steals the spider? I suggust you read because this book has interesting facts and fun fictional animals.

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Summary: THE BEST BOOK EVER AND EVERY1 SHOULD READ!!!
Review: This fascinating story is about a group of four friends: Alan Morris, Steve Leonard (Steve is also known as Steve Leopard because of his misbehavior), Tommy Jones, and Darren Shan. Alan finds a flyer in his brother's room about a Circus of Freaks, which fascinates them in buying the tickets. Alan gets the flyer at school and shows it to his friends but Mr. Dalton, their teacher, catches them with the flyer and takes it away. Steve is known as Mr. Dalton's pet in class so he asks if he can get the flyer back so he does except Mr. Dalton rips the address off the flyer so they can not go to the circus, luckily they memorized the address and Steve gets the tickets. But there is only one problem...Steve is only able to get two tickets. So when he goes back he makes copies of it and throws it in the air and sees who catches the other real ticket and the one who catches it is Darren.
Darren and Steve go to the freak show behind their parent's backs. They get to see a lot of tricks by real freaks that they actually believe. After the freak show Steve told Darren that he is going to stay and told Darren to go back home. So instead of Darren going back home he stayed back and was watching Steve talking to Mr. Crepsley (Vur Hurston the Vampire). Steve told Mr. Crepsley that he wanted to become a vampire and then Mr. Crepsley tasted his blood to see if his blood was good or evil and it turned to be evil so when Mr. Crepsley tells Steve that he doesn't believe him and got angry and threatened him and said that he one day will hunt him down. When Steve left, Darren waited a bit until Mr. Crepsley went away also so he doesn't know that he was there spying on them.
Later Steve goes home and Darren goes back to his home and makes up an excuse to his parents about why he came home at night. Darren tries to ignore Steve at school but Steve asks him why he has been ignoring him and he lies but Steve isn't exactly taking that lie as the truth so he just lets go of it and sees what happens next to see if Darren was saying the truth or not. Few days later Darren steals Madam Octa and blackmails Mr. Crepsley. Steve finds out that he steals it and while Darren was showing Steve that he can control the spider Darren's sister comes in so Darren loses control of Madam Octa and then the spider bit Steve and then he stayed unconscious (in other words somehow dead but actually alive). Darren's sister tells him to tell the truth to his parents while Steve is in the ambulance on his way to the hospital but he refuses and his sister promises him that she wont tell them unless she has to badly.
Darren goes to Mr. Crepsley because he knows that he would be the only one who can cure Steve. Mr. Crepsley tells Darren that he has the antidote but he can only give it to Steve in one condition if Darren can become a half-vampire and serve Mr. Crepsley as his assistant. Darren doesn't want to become a half-vampire nor does he want his friend to die so he takes the risk and becomes a half vampire and then Mr. Crepsley give the antidote to Steve. Darren on the other hand was talking to his sister and was about to bite her on her neck but snapped out of it when he saw himself in the mirror and realized that that wasn't him it was someone evil then he let his sister go and told Mr. Crepsley about what happened then Mr. Crepsley told him that he can't stay in the human world or else he would kill on people that are really valuable to him so Mr. Crepsley told Darren that he has to fake that he is dead in front of his parents so he could be with Mr. Crepsley in the vampire world.
Mr. Crepsley got an antidote that fakes your dead and people will actually think you're dead. So Darren makes believe he's dead and his parents believe and then he gets buried and Mr. Crepsley gets him out and then Steve knew something was up so he takes Darren behind a tree while Mr. Crepsley was putting the coffin back in the grave. Steve threatened Darren and told him why he turned into a half vampire and Darren tried to tell steve that he did it to save his life but he didn't believe him so he told him the same thing that he told Mr. Crepsley that he will hunt him down. Then steve left him and Darren and Mr. Crepsley went to hunt down for food.
I love this book because it is full of suspense and its horror I mean I had to do something important but I couldn't stop myself from reading the book I stayed up until 3:00 AM only reading the book...I know some people might think I am crazy to stay up until 3 in the morning just reading a book but hey I should say to people that think reading is very boring its great and this book should be on your list of reading as NUMBER 1!

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Summary: Cirque Du Freak #1: A Living Nightmare
Review: This is one of the greatest book that I have ever read. I can't wait to read the rest of the series. In this first book of the series, Darren Shan and his best friend Steve sneak into an illegal Freak Show. The young boys are amazed and somewhat scared at times as they watch the show. Darren and Steve expected the people in the show to just be regular people in costumes, but act after act, they are convinced that this was no fake! Steve notices something peculiar about the spider man, Mr. Crepsley, and stays around after the show to ask him a few questions. Being Steve's best friend, Darren secretly stays back and spies on Steve and Mr. Crepsley from a balcony. Darren is bewildered as he listens to the conversation. With this information that Darren heard, he gets himself into a very hard position and ends up having to sacrafice something very important. Read this fabulous book to find out more about the Saga of Darren Shan.

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Summary: Tinas REVEIW
Review: Well, the plot was a nice B-. Not terrible, and I have read the whole series to date (my sis gave me the first), however the plot is full of holes.

I mean, the first error that jumps out at you is that when somebody dies, embalming is typical. OK, I have never been to another country besides the USA, and since the narrator doesn't tell where they are from, embalming might not be typical there. However, I don't know...if you were a vampire trying to fake your death...and they replaced your blood with chemicals and who-knows-what, wellll...doesn't seem very good. Also, wouldn't they investigate to rule out a non-accidental death? People don't just fall out of windows, and Darren didn't portray himself as the sort of kid with reasons to commit suicide, let alone without a note. The character development was poor and slightly wooden.

I had always imagined vampires to have fangs. I don't know why, I was just kind of disappointed. Not very scary, if that is what you are looking for, and even though it never hangs dry it still doesn't quite get you to the edge of your seat.

Overall, a C+, but if you like mild-horror and just want a book you don't have to delve too deep into to get the plot, I would get this series.