Vampire Mountain

Half-vampire Darren Shan must leave the safety of the Cirque du Freak again and embark on a perilous journey with his mentor, Mr Crepsley. They must travel on foot to the Council at Vampire Mountain, facing wolves, bears and their purple-faced, human-murdering cousins, the Vampaneze. But when Darren finally makes it there, he finds that the danger before him is far worse than anything out on the mountain trail. In the shadow of the journey to Vampire Mountain, a plot is being set up involving the terrifying Mr Tiny's doom-laden prophecy predicting the rise of a Vampanese Lord. Vampire Mountain is the first book of the second three-part adventure in the saga of Darren Shan, and therefore readers have to wait for the following two novels (Trials of Death and Vampire Prince) for this set-up to come to fruition. The plot here is thinner than in the previous trilogy, in which the books were more independent of one another. Fans of Darren Shan will, I am sure, be happy to commit to reading all three books (and probably more - the author envisages writing about 20 in all) but Vampire Mountain may not appeal to those who wish to dip in and out of the series. However, half-vampire Darren Shan as a character has enough magnetism to carry the books despite these problems. While the first three books were essentially horror stories in which the real world rubbed shoulders with that of the vampires, Vampire Mountain is more fantasy, without the friction that made the series so fascinatingly macabre. (Kirkus UK)