I should have been beavering away on my final edit of the Volume 3 Archibald Lox books this week, but it's my son Dante's half term, so I've been helping out with the kids. Not to worry -- I've been making good progress on it, so I should still be able to bring it in on schedule, and realese the three books of the Volume over the summer, before releasing the collected omnibus edition in November.

In the meantime, here's a link to a beautiful review for book 5 in the series, Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell, which was the middle section of the Volume 2 story arc. It comes courtesy of a familiar old reviewer -- The Literary Connoisseur. She noted, in the midst of her review, that:

"I have no shame in admitting that Archibald Lox and the Slides of Bon Repell, book five in Archie's story, is a slow-burner. Until about three quarters in, I considered this story of Darren Shan's to perhaps be a "bridge" book, a book that connects two more adventurous, more heart-pumping stories together with a bit of a breather in between.

"Little did I know that Darren Shan was luring me into a false sense of security... By about 63%, I could not put the book down -- reading in such short bursts I'd pace around my kitchen, book in hand, chewing the inside of my bottom lip with nerves. I found myself in such a constant, frantic state of distress, I'd positively search my brain to think of someone, anyone, on my friend's list who's also read this series so that I'd have someone to talk to about it."

Heh heh!! I love when I can play with a reader's expectations like that! Pacing is something I'm always experimenting with. Sometimes I start a book with a bang - like Lord Loss - while other times I'll let things roll along quietly enough for a time, before ramping up the tension later in the story line - as I did in The Thin Executioner. The Archibald Lox books definitely fall into that latter camp. I let the story wend its way smoothly along, before suddenly changing tack and speeding things up for a while, then letting them slow down again. It's a bit like the course of a very long, twisting river -- a river of BLOOD, if you will...

Anyway, you can read the full review by clicking here: http://theliteraryconnoisseur.blogspot.com/2021/08/archibald-lox-and-slides-of-bon-repell.html

And if you want to buy any of the Archibald Lox books, you can find plenty of direct links in the Febryary issue of my monthly newsletter, here: https://darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly