The Vampire's Assistant - Darren Shan

==General introduction to the book==

The vampire's assistant. Part two of the amazing 'Saga of Darren Shan', and the sequel to the excellent 'Cirque du Freak', as the front cover tells us - "Cirque du freak - the nightmare continues..." As we know, this 'nightmare' is what Darren's life is turning into, as at the end of the first book we see Darren having to become a half-vampire as Mr Crepsley's assistant in order to save ...
...a normal human life with the vampiric blood running through his veins.

==The official introduction at the beginning of the book==

My name's Darren Shan. I'm a half vampire.
I wasn't born that way. I used to be ordinary. I lived at home with my parents and younger sister, Annie. I enjoyed school and had lots of friends.
I liked reading horror stories and watching scary movies. When a freak show came to ... more

General introduction to the book

The vampire's assistant. Part two of the amazing 'Saga of Darren Shan', and the sequel to the excellent 'Cirque du Freak', as the front cover tells us - "Cirque du freak - the nightmare continues..." As we know, this 'nightmare' is what Darren's life is turning into, as at the end of the first book we see Darren having to become a half-vampire as Mr Crepsley's assistant in order to save his best friend Steve Leonard (or as Darren calls him Steve Leopard). He also has to fake his death because he realises he can no longer live a normal human life with the vampiric blood running through his veins.

The official introduction at the beginning of the book

But the weirdest part came after the show. Steve recognised one of the characters from the show - he'd seen a drawing of him in an old book and knew he was - a vampire. He stuck around after the show and asked the vampire to turn him into one, too!
Mr Crepsley - the vampire - would have, but he found out Steve's blood was evil, and that was the end of that. Or it would have been the end, except I stuck around, too, to see what Steve was up to.

To cut a long story short, Madam Octa bit Steve and he ended up in hospital. He would have died, so I went to Mr Crepsley and asked him to save Steve. He agreed, but in return I had to become a half vampire and travel with him as his assistant!
I ran away after he'd turned me into a half vampire(by pumping part of his own horrible blood into me) and saved Steve, but then I realised I was hungry for blood, and was afraid I'd do something terrible (like bite my sister) if I stayed at home.

Cover design

The cover design for this book was again designed by Tim Byrne (the same man who designed the Cirque du Freak book) but this time there is just a rather freaky looking face with bright green eyes and an open mouth showing lots of razor sheep teeth. As the face is red coloured and sort of blended into the black background colour of the book, it almost looks inhuman, which Darren now is. I think that there is a picture of Darren on the cover because it gives the reader a strong image of what he was actually described to look like in the book, because different readers will each make their own images of Darren and the rest of the characters and storyline as they read the book.
Again though there is the 'skull' logo at the top of the book which is the symbol for the 'Saga of Darren Shan'. Then there are the 2 obvious things: the author's name (Darren Shan) and the name of the book (The vampire's assistant); and finally the sort of quote which is different for every book - in this case, as I said before, it is 'Cirque du Freak - the nightmare continues...'

Price

And to conclude...

The vampire's assistant is officially described as "a compelling book...a plot full of twists which leaves the reader hungry for more", by JK Rowling, and to be frank I couldn't agree more. Although these books are supposedly meant for teenage reading, I would recommend them to anyone of any age, as the plot is so gripping you will not be able to put the book down and stop reading. 

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