Horror Book Review Darren Shan The Darren Shan Saga 2 The Vampires Assistant

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Harper Collins. Spoiler alerts Now a half-vampire, Darren follows his Master, Mr. Crepsley to join the Vampire Circus Of Freaks. Darren is unsure whether Mr. Crepsley is a good or a bad vampire. Darren has to look after his master during the day when Darren is still able to move around in daylight. Darren learns that he is not immortal, but that he will grow older much more slowly, possibly living for hundreds of years. Darren has one problem. He flatly refuses to drink human blood. Told that animal blood will preserve him for a while, he is informed that sooner or later he must feed off a human or die. Darren is prepared to die rather than do it. This is despite a vampire bite rarely being used to kill humans. A vampire can take some blood, without taking enough to kill. A vampire will also induce an amnesia effect that prevents the bite victim from learning what just happened to him or her. A vampire can only take a life in either self-defence, or to take the soul of someone who may die anyway into the vampire, allowing the bitten person to live on for longer inside the vampire. Such a practice, Darren is told, is very rare. At the circus, Darren becomes good friends with Evra, the snake boy who he saw in book one. He also has a young mortal friend who works at the circus. Trouble erupts when an animal rights activist begins attempting to rescue the circus werewolf from captivity. The werewolf is caged because it is wild ad dangerous. Another problem is the arrival of one Desmond Tiny, (Mister Des-Tiny) a sinister vampire master who seems to be able to start earthquakes and fire up volcanoes at will. The vampires, including Mr. Crepsley, are scared of Des Tiny. He has a group of mute servants, al dwarfs, who find him scraps of rubbish and rotten meats to eat. Darren suspects rightly that Mr. Tiny has no qualms about eating people too. Things come to a head when the animal rights activist releases the werewolf, which maims the one human boy working at the circus. As the boy is dying, Darren takes pity on him and takes his blood, and absorbs his soul. He has lost his fear of taking human blood. Probably the most conventional book of the twelve, with a fairly linear plot and only the sinister Des Tiny really standing out as an exceptional figure. Arthur Chappell