vampires

Darren Shane a strong,brave,young boy,makes a path with a mysterious person to save his friends life.Now his simple life is one big obstacal to stay alive.He has to work his way up the system with the new people he has meant or he can end up dead.He needs to earn there trust by proven himself to the system.
Cirque Du Freak (A Living Nightmare)is a book of mystery and imagination.It was like I was apart of Darren; everytime he was happy,I was happy,everytime he was confused,I was confused.These addicting novels are my all time favorites, and should be read by everyone.
Cirque Du Freak (A Living Nightmare) is a heart stopping book. I recommend this book to anyone who want to enjoy what there reading.This book is a neverending story that keeps getting better and better.
(...)

I put off reading this book for quite a while, on the basis that I didn't want anyone assuming that I read it solely because of JK Rowling's recommendation. Fans of Garth Nix's "Seventh Tower" series, with the unresolved endings, may like this book...

Darren and his friends are ordinary enough kids, who find a flier for the traveling freak show "Cirque Du Freak" -- snake boy, the wolf man, giant spider -- and a vampire. Not a warm and fuzzy exhibit show.

Darren and his friend Steve sneak to the freak show, where the ominous Mr. Tall informs them that every act is real -- which, naturally, they are (will kids read a scary book about a fake freak show? Course not). Steve recognizes Mr. Crepsly as a vampire, and exhibits the truly "freaky" wish to be a vampire as well. (Counseling, kid, counseling!) Making the situation even more unreal is Darren, who has a thing about spiders and wishes to steal the enormous arachnid Madame Octa. Darren must deal with an enormous spider, a sideshow full of frightening freaks, and his own best friend...

Darren is just weird enough to fit into this freaky story, without losing the understanding and sympathy of the readers. Steve was a bit too weird for my personal tastes, wanting to be a vampire and so forth, and so I had difficulty connecting with him--but that may have been intentional.

The writing style is snappy and spooky, in keeping with this genre, without becoming too wordy or gross as many horror books are. Atmosphere is handled well, especially in the Cirque Du Freak, and in scenes with Madame Octa and the vampire Crepsly.

The book occasionally becomes a little creepy for younger kids and a little too dark for the faint-of-heart. Additionally, descriptions occasionally become too thin and the characters sometimes take odd actions--but again, the second thing may be deliberate.

Though not flawless, I'll read the next book with pleasure.

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!