Just finished reading the first book in the Crepsley Saga by Darren Shan called Birth of a Killer and it was great! I’ve been reading Darren Shan’s work for a number of years. I’ve brought my kids hundreds of books, I’ve read very few of them, but Darren Shan sparked my intrest when I read the first page of Cirque Du Freak it started about how the main character liked Spiders and how his parents had got him a tarantula and he sucked it up with a vacuum cleaner and killed it Blah,Blah, Blah, but then it said, but that’s not where my story begins My story begin on the toilet, I was like “WHAT!” from that moment on I was hooked, I had to keep reading.

I like to read teen horror mainly because in kids books all the crude adult stuff is left out and you can get down to the fantasy rather than trivial adult content. There’s no breaks in the action particularly in Darren Shan’s work which is why he’s our best author. We’ve laughed, cried and said eww! or cool :) more times than we can remember in the fantasy world of Daren Shan’s books.

I say “our” since the whole family loves Darren’s Work, it all started when I read my kids Cirque Du Freak saga out loud at bed time some years ago. I had been reading to them in there room most night, but one night I wasn’t feeling well, so I read the book in the living room while my hubby was on the computer. As I was reading my hubby asked “what’s that your reading” I was on the 2nd book of the saga at that point, I told him it was a horror book about vampires. He came off his computer and settled down with the kids to listen to me read and we’ve never looked back since, when ever a new book of Darren Shan’s comes out I read it to the whole family especially my hubby. I’d say my hubby loves me to read to him more than the kids (apparently I’m really good at reading out loud since I put in accents of different characters and read with emotion). My husband always gets excited when I buy a Darren Shan book, He’s had me reading for 3 hours straight sometimes and up until the early hours, when ever I close the book at the end of a chapter he gives me the puppy eyes and says just one more chapter.

Reading Darren Shan’s work has become a great family time and tradition. Although since my eldest is at Uni our family is dwindling a little with just my hubby and son to listen to me read, but I know my hubby is going to keep the tradition alive for as long as there are fantasy stories to be read :) . Our favourite set of book by Darren Shan has to be the demonata series and Darren Shan Cirque Du freak saga. All Darren Shan books are gory and full of adventure, just how we like it.

Looking forward to see where the Crepsley saga takes us, it’s based on the character Mr Crepsley who was originally in the Cirque De freak books as a young Vampires master and mentor, he was a big character in those books and someone who had a story to tell of his own, I for one am clad to see Darren Shan write a set of books about Mr Crepsly and we’re looking forward for the second book Oceans of Blood that is to be released in the UK in May 2011.