Vampire Blood Trilogy by Darren Shan

 (Book Review)This book is actually a collection of three books (Cirque Du Freak, The Vampire’s Assistant, Tunnels of Blood) originally published separately. I was going to review them all separately, but since they’re all such quick reads, and because this book review project is already threatening to take over this blog, I thought I’d just review them all as a whole.

These Darren Shan books are very popular with my Japanese Junior High School students in translation. For a long time I actually thought these books were Japanese because of the publisher’s ploy of having Darren Shan, the main character from the books, credited as the author. Because I couldn’t see an author listed on the book cover, I simply assumed the Japanese translator was the author. Then, when I found these books in the English section of the bookstore, I decided to by a copy to find out what my students were so excited about. (I’m not sure if these books are as popular back home as they are in Japan. Perhaps someone who works with Junior High school kids could fill me in).

These books are fantasy adventure/ horror books aimed at the young adult market. When I was a kid I avoided these kinds of books like the plague. What could be worse than a horror book that adults had actually approved for kids?

And yet there’s some pretty frank stuff in here. Maybe the standards have changed since I was a kid. There are mildly graphic description of a vampire getting his intestines ripped out, a kid eaten alive by a wolfman, and a misguided environmentalist who tries to free the wolfman and gets his arms bitten off. (That will teach those dirty hippies.) Several of the main characters meet with gruesome ends, which adds a bit of suspense to the book. When a character is in danger he is really in danger. You can’t assume everything will turn out all right because it’s a children’s book.

What kills this book is the infantile style. Maybe it’s unfair to harp on a children’s book for stylistic concerns, but even when compared with other young adult books like “Harry Potter”, it really falls flat. The characters in “Vampire Blood Trilogy” talk like they’re in a book. Especially the children characters, all of whom have extremely flat dialogue. The principal characters often do stupid things apparently just for the point of creating conflict and advancing the plot.

Because of the bare bones style, it’s an easy read. But it’s broken into lots of short chapters two or three pages long, which makes it jarring to read too much of in one sitting.

Although this collection is referred to as a trilogy, there is no over arching story arc to connect these three stories. Rather they are just the first 3 stories in a larger series, combined into a trilogy edition for publishing reasons. I have to admit I’m somewhat curious to find how the series turns out, but these books are so poorly written that I doubt if I'll keep reading. If I end up reading further into the series, rest assured I'll review the other books on this blog.

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