A review by dsuttles
Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare by Darren Shan

1.0

When an author relies on exclamation marks and italics to make their story exciting, readers aren't fooled. They are just disappointed by rhetorical gimmicks lazily used to create perceptions of fear, horror, etc. That's exactly how I felt about the first book in Darren Shan's Cirque du Freak series. Sure, I read about how scared the protagonist felt when he first entered the circus, when he witnessed his friend secretly confronting the vampire, when he let Madame Octa crawl up his leg - but I never felt the fear along with him. And what I've come to expect from stories written in the first person is to be taken along the journey with the narrator. For something geared to be so sensational, this book really fell flat. A fast, but dissatisfying read.