the Dragon in the Library

This book by Louie Stowell is the first in a series of three novels following a ten-year old tomboy called Kit Spencer who gets peer-pressured into going to the library with her friends Josh and Alita, only to stumble upon magical secrets (of the variety that you can probably guess from the title) and commence training with head librarian Faith, who is also a wizard. Beyond that I won't spoil the plot, other than that the Evil Businessman Bad Guy is a very entertainingly Dahlesque villain. The prose is sharp and accessible, the story is well-paced and exciting, the arcane lore is actually quite well-explained and internally consistent, and the illustrations by Davide Ortu are pretty delightful and add a lot of character.

   Overall this is a cracking little children's novel - I bought it as a fifth-birthday present for my niece and pre-read it to make sure it was appropriate, but I reckon this would go down a bomb with any imaginative kids between the ages of five and nine or so. Would recommend.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

This book, a collection of medical-theological reflections by eminent surgeon Dr Paul Brand edited together and fleshed out a bit by Philip Yancey, is an actually miraculous read. It will both make you appreciate the complex marvel that is the human body in ways you probably never knew if you're not in the medical profession, and further to this, its interwoven reflections (which I will talk about in a moment) really drive home the New Testament metaphor of the Church being the Body of Christ in fresh, compelling ways, that make this a powerful apologetic for the Church as the vehicle of witness in faith. It is also quite beautifully written, often dealing with intricate biological subjects but never getting bogged down in jargon; and when making its wider points it does so with a deftness and clarity that makes the book extremely easy reading. I finished it in two [not-even-that]-long sittings.

   The book is split into four sections, though there is initially quite a long preface by Philip Yancey which is excellent reading in itself, mainly reflecting on his friendship with Brand and how the older man was a source of much inspiration to his faith and also just a marvellous human all-round, doing much great research that revolutionized leprosy treatment in the 20th-century.

   The first of the four main parts is about cells. Their central metaphor here is drawing on the imagery the apostle Paul uses (see 1 Corinthians 12, the second half of the chapter) to talk about individual members within the Body that is the Church, and how each needs to perform its duty to the benefit of the whole; cells are the perfect metaphor to carry this forward. Seven bitesize chapters (all the chapters in this book are bitesize, part of what makes it so readable) deal with: the nature of this membership as individual entities; the specialization of those members; the innate diversity of the individuals all working together; the intrinsic worth of each individual member; the total unity of all members as one collective; the duty of service to the whole demanded by the whole of its members; and finally "mutiny" - which in cell terms means cancer (and this chapter uses this metaphorical understanding of the Body of Christ to talk about the hoarding of wealth/food/time in the global context of the Church in a world where there is so much need with such adroitness that it alone is worth reading the book for).

   The next, bones. Metaphorically here Brand and Yancey are talking about the doctrinal elements that support Christianity from its core - the Law, the character of God, and such. Its chapters deal with: the notion of having a frame from which everything else either hangs or is contained; the hardness necessary to deal with knocks and turns of life; the freedom enabled the human body by the marvel that is its skeleton (also this chapter contains a "positive re-spin" of the Ten Commandments that are just brilliant); the essential capacity for growth and healing; the adaptability to new contexts and activities; and finally we get a brilliantly insightful chapter that talks about the dangers of legalism by inversing the metaphor and considering creatures that have exoskeletons.

   The third, skin. In the Christian metaphor this is all about love, as you'll hopefully see is fairly obvious from the brief sketches of each chapter. They talk about skin as: something visible, by which the world recognises our outward form; perceptive and sensitive in relation to its environment and other things and people; compliant in its flexibility and durability; full of an immensity of inner interconnections that transmit information; essential to the physical and emotive experience of embodied love; and lastly capable of confronting threats and protecting innards.

   And finally, the body's capacity for motion. The metaphorical application is somewhat looser here, ranging from reliance on the Holy Spirit to keep us tapped into "the Head" of the Body (that is of course Christ) to the need for the Church to be on its toes in responding to things around it. Chapters: the concert of muscle activity that is movement; the balance between all facets of moving parts; why dysfunction occurs and how it can be remedied; the need for a stable, trusted hierarchy for effective function (this makes the shift from muscles to nerves); the guidance of the whole by the executive operation of the Head (or the brain, depending on what side of the metaphor you're looking through); and the capacity of the whole to be real, meaningful, as a human presence in another's life.

   I would heartily recommend this book to Christian readers as an illuminating work on what it can, or should, or does, look like to be part of the Body of Christ; moreover from that gospel angle it will bring you to an incredible perspective on the magical sack of electric meat that is you, your own actual body. Brand's memories of his medical exploits, in particular those from among the leper communities whom he served so diligently, selflessly and effectively, will leave you breathless. Similarly I would recommend it to non-Christian readers who all think this is a pretty weird metaphor, and Brand and Yancey's brilliant collaboration here will leave you scratching your head in wonderment but substantively better informed about why we use this phrase to talk about the Church - and what a perfect metaphor it actually is.

A Wilderness of Mirrors

This book by Mark Meynell is, as its subtitle puts it, a Christian apologetic via an exploration into "trusting again in a cynical world". And boy, is it timely. In fact maybe too timely - but we'll come back to that point later. First let's get a grip on what it actually talks about.

   The first part of the book looks into the legacy of fracturing trust in the modern age. In three heavily-endnoted chapters, Meynell talks about the failures on this front of our ruling authorities (although largely here drawing on historical examples, which is all very well, but I would have liked a bit more of a juicy socio-political analysis), our mediating authorities (informers and the like), and our personal authorities (or caregivers - though the chapter swiftly brushes aside both the medical and teaching professions within a single page and then is mainly charged with the failures of the church*).

   The second part is a short, theoretical pair of reflections on the loneliness-inducing alienation, lostness and paranoia that we can all-too-easily succumb to in such a climate. These chapters are fine enough I guess, but Meynell doesn't really say anything that hasn't already been said in far more insightful ways by both academics and meme-smiths, so I won't toot the horn for this middle section too much. I also think he entirely fails to address a few key factors that are driving our sense of alienation, betrayedness and paranoia - the rampantly shifting techno-social landscape, the death throes of late capitalism, the ecological crises, to name just three. You can probably think of more. A bit of legwork in talking about the sociology or political-economic theory of trust would also have been appreciated.

   But it is in part three that we get to the meat of the book - the Christian apologetic section. Firstly he deals with the biblical conception of original sin as both the starting-point and to-some-degree justification of such a culture of mistrust: this was an interesting chapter and made a lot of connections I hadn't seen before. The next three chapters are far more simply predictable: Jesus is the one we can trust; the Church is the society in which we can start to break away from patterns of cynicism; the gospel is the message and narrative we need to begin building a more trustful future. Nothing bad, but nothing original: especially in the final chapter, a few more pragmatic pointers about how to break through psychologically or socially into the cynical miasma of the postmodern world wouldn't have gone amiss.

   As I hinted in my opening paragraph, the real problem with this book is that it came out too soon. It was published in 2015, and while "post truth" was already a thing in certain academic circles at that time, it wasn't yet the predominant socio-political normativity - had this book been put together even three years later, let alone six and he'd have had all the Covid madness to break down to boot, it could have had a lot more to draw on and impactfully say. But that's a pretty cynical two cents to dig into a book which is a perfectly respectable Christian apologetic speaking into a vital issue in most of the contemporary western world. It's not great reading, but it's perfectly readable, if that makes sense. I'd probably only recommend this to you if you're already a Christian and you're specifically looking for a resource on how to engage the cynicism of our times; as exhortational as the final sections were for me as a believing reader, I really doubt they'd convince anyone who wasn't already convinced of the Truth beyond truth in a world where truth barely even exists anymore.

* Something I am all too familiar with, as the elder of my old church The Crowded House, one Steve Timmis (who, interestingly enough, wrote one of the blurb reviews on this very book - he describes it as "well researched, well written, and well worth reading" - I tentatively agree), was pushed to resign as CEO of global church-planting network Acts 29 and as leader of the church for persistent allegations of bullying behaviour and fostering a culture of spiritual abuse under his leadership. I have talked about my personal journey in all this in other posts which I'm not going to bother to link here, but if you're really interested feel free to search through my blog's (not inconsiderable, I know lols) history until you find the particularly long, whingy posts.

the Art of Disruption

This book, part autobiographical reflection and part political manifesto, is the first book by Magid Magid, who frequently made global headlines* when he was Sheffield's Lord Mayor a couple of years ago.**

   In it, Magid develops the "ten commandments of Sheffield", a sequence of generally agreeable but radical in intentionality diktats rooted in his ethical thinking (originally put together as a poster for Tramlines, then kind of just started circulating around activist and youth circles of their own volition). These are as follows:

1. Be kind
2. Don't be a prick
3. Do epic shit
4. See the good
5. Don't lose hope
6. Do it differently
7. Always buy your round
8. Don't kiss a Tory
9. Tell your ma you love her
10. You've got this!

   Obviously there is a lot of wiggle-room in the actual applicability of these principles, but as guidelines for personal conduct and attitude I think they're a solid contribution to the discourse on how we should behave in relation to politics and society in the 21st century. Magid's book is not so much an argumentative justification for these commandments, nor speculations as to how they may be enacted - it's more a process of thinking through the values underlying them and looking at how everyone can grasp and engage with such principles in their own life contexts. It's not so much a true manifesto then as it is an inspirational primer to show people how and why they should care about positive liberty and the common good; an affirmation that we can change things. All of this is rooted in Magid's discussion of where/when these values have prompted developments in his own life, which has been a vibrant one to say the least - Sheffield's first Muslim/black Lord Mayor, his experiences growing up as a refugee, his dalliances with international media furores, and his election as a Yorkshire & Humber MEP during the whole Brexit debacle - man's had some interesting grit in his life.

   The prose is not particularly dazzling, but I kind of liked that - it almost hardly feels like reading a book, it's so casual and conversational, and therefore extremely easy to read. I finished it in two or three sittings. You really get a feel of Magid's personality and passion through the course of the ten chapters (one for each commandment obvs) and for this reason alone I would recommend this book - for if everyone in the world had someone like Magid in their life, democratic societies would be immeasurably healthier and happier. I wouldn't call this a must-read, but it's a provocative and heartwarming take on and against the cynical culture of our day, and there are anecdotes and wisdom-bits in there that could genuinely propel the apathetic into active sociopolitical concern. Not that he specifically needs it for that reason but I've decided to give this book to my eldest brother as I think he'll resonate strongly with the ethos at the core of the book, which is no singular monolithic ideology, but rather an open-minded personal quest for truth and justice - and that is what we should hope to expect from all our legislating representatives.***

* Perhaps most notoriously for calling Donald Trump a "wasteman" & subsequently (and hilariously) banning the then-President from Sheffield.

** Not to name-drop or owt but I met the guy a few times. Truly lovely chap.

*** I'm really hoping he gets the Green Party nomination for Sheffield Central in the 2024 general election, as Magid has enormous name-recognition value among the youth - here's me crossing my fingers that despite his last elected role (as MEP) falling apart in the ruins of Brexit he gets a chance to shine in Parliament proper.

the Trinity and the Kingdom of God

This book is the first of Jürgen Moltmann's contributions to systematic theology. Through it he poses and develops a coherent Trinitarian doctrine of who God is and how we can think of Him* in relation to his "kingdom" - with the specific holistic methodological aim of starting to heal the schisms in the Church (across Protestant and Catholic thinking, as well as older disagreements between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, and even pointing at ways in which all Christian denominations have their roots in Judaic tradition and should acknowledge this).

   His arguments are complex and I will not attempt to summarise them here, but for a couple of overview-type considerations from his conclusions. This is proper academic dense theology and has a megaton of thought-provoking meat on its bones; while its translation from the German renders the syntax difficult to penetrate in places the prose is more accessible than it could be** given the subject-matter in all its mystical complexity and the high-mindedness with which the book's pursuit is laid out. Moltmann discusses the character and nature of God as Trinity, the inner life of the Trinitarian God and the distinct personalities of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the concept of perichoresis as the inter-relationship between these persons, the ways in which God can be said to suffer along with Creation as revealed in the passion of Christ, the distinctions between monarchical views of monotheism and the unique concepts of the Trinity, the supremacy and goodness of God in this sense, the essential mystery that underlies our knowledge of any of this, and the Kingdom of God as the historical/eschatological liberation of Creation into fulness in freedom. I'm not well-schooled enough in theology to be able to pick apart all his points, but they are clearly rooted in an incredible depth of biblical familiarity, philosophical dialectic and indebtedness to the diverse myriad Christian thinkers across history who have taken up their pens to attempt speculation and logical inquiry as to the realities that lay behind the issues discussed in this book.

   In short, this is by far the most challenging and thus rewarding book on the theology of the Trinity that I've read. God is wholly transcendent and ineffable, yes, but has also made Himself known through the testament of the Scriptures and the life of Jesus Christ - and thus we can know something essential of who He is; and in reading this book I feel closer than I ever have to a cohesively satisfying understanding of Trinitarian doctrine. Even given the difficulty of this book - you don't need a theology degree to understand it, but you will need an immense degree of receptivity and willingness to think complexly - I would heartily recommend this as a text to any Christian reader who wants a deeper intellectual grasp of the nature of our God, and would even tentatively recommend it to non-Christian readers who see the Trinitarian doctrine as logically incoherent as Moltmann's work in explication renders it just about fathomable. I plan on reading this again with my dad so we can discuss together what it says, means, and implies.

* Or "Them", as I have recently starting thinking of God - for the dual reasons that it A. acknowledges the plurality of personhood in the Trinity without recourse to "tritheism" by legitimising both the plural and singular uses of "they" and B. draws attention to the transcendence of gender by the Trinitarian God, which is something largely unacknowledged by the traditional usage of "He" for a being that was arguably only ever 1/3*** male during His incarnation.

** That said, Moltmann does have that same nasty habit that I detest in philosophical/theological writings where he will on occasion just dump a phrase at you in Latin or Greek without translating it. Even in the endnotes, which are mostly just references but still have a fair bit to contribute on certain secondary points within the text.

*** Moltmann would have had a go at me for referring to Christ the Son as only a third of the Godhead as His state of being is fully God - I'm not dallying with modalism, but you know what I meant.

Charles Spurgeon's sermons on Proverbs

This isn't so much a book as it is a collection (available from that link as a pdf - free) of sermons, by the great Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon, on the biblical wisdom book of Proverbs; I've been devotionally reading it one sermon at a time along with my dad for over a year. Rather than working meticulously through the whole book, Spurgeon selects one or two proverbs from each chapter and reflectively spins these out into biblically-rich, theologically-sound and spiritually-edifying sermons. He manages to walk a fine line incredibly well indeed - both developing the inner concepts of the proverbs to demonstrate their wisdom, and extrapolating from them ways that such wisdom can and should lead us deeper into the realities of the gospel. He was very clearly an amazing preacher and thus is in my view deserving of his reputation; erudite in his speech yet accessible to common language and sensibility. The "Victorian-ness" of the prose is a minor gripe but read aloud, as me and my dad did, this evaporates; you are left with Spurgeon in all his intellectual heft weaving points and leading you into Christian exhortation. While I can't definitively say so, I strongly suspect most of his other sermons to be of equal value, and loads of them are online - so check them out. If you're particularly interested in the gospel-centred application of Solomonic wisdom, check this one out specifically.

Sons of Destiny

This book is the final instalment of Darren Shan's vampire saga - and as such, I will in this post be giving away major spoilers for the series as a whole in my ruminations on the series' overall plot, characters, themes and whatnot. You've been warned. (Check through all 11 of my previous posts this month if you want extremely-brief spoiler-free overviews of all the other books in the saga. If you're not bothered about me spoiling what is a Thoroughly Solid children's/teenagers' fantasy series, go ahead and read this one.)

   First off a quick note on the premise as a whole. While there have been a slew of vampire series across both adult- and youth-oriented reading markets in recent decades, and admittedly I have read very few of these (yes, I've never read Twilight, and I'm not likely to), the creative approach taken towards vampirism in world-building terms here is well-developed and innovative in ways I doubt many comparable series have been. They have culture, history, traditions, and so on, that go far beyond just "sparkling in the sunlight and having beef with werewolves". And across the saga you really get a feel of immersion in the vampire world; helped no doubt by the fact that Shan, while he could never be accused of being some poetic or prosaically-experimental genius, is a damn good writer who consistently comes up with good, bitesize stories, and tells them well, using both well-fleshed-out characters with meaningful arcs and punchy dynamic descriptions and action scenes to do so.

   Thematically, I think the saga can be split into four distinct chunks that parallel its sub-trilogies. The first three are a pretty by-the-book coming-of-age deal, albeit with vampirism as a context, in which the protagonist (also, confusingly, named Darren Shan) learns how to stand on his own two feet and assert himself as a person, bonds with new people who accept him for who he is and a mentor who promises to take him to new heights, falls in love, yada yada yada. The next three are much more concerned with how one as a newfound adult tries to integrate with a new strange society (so just, society then); the challenges faced by Darren in books four to six really force him to grow in the main ways we saw he was stunted in the introductory three. The third sub-trilogy doesn't impose much depth of character development from its happenings, and so the themes of growth and self-worth are less clear, but here also we should consider that it is going on against the backdrop of the vampire-vampaneze war - and this makes for great stuff in that it can really get into dealing with themes of hate, revenge, right and wrong in messy conflicts; things like that. Finally the fourth wraps up the whole saga pretty much perfectly on a developmental level in my opinion, dealing heavily with concepts of destiny, mortality and sacrifice - woven deftly into the narration as Darren has to face these weighty themes head on.

   Plotwise I've talked briefly about all eleven prior instalments already, and am hesitant to talk about what happens in this the final one, because that does really spoil the whole series, and I'm already going to be dropping several fat spoilers in the next paragraph about characters, so I'll do you the mercy of not ruining the saga as a whole. But trust me, the ending is pretty epic; unexpected, well-earned, and totally logical within the constructed world. Looking back over the whole saga it is honestly hard to spot anything that stands out as an obvious plot-hole, which is pretty impressive for a twelve-book teen series - and while the pacing may feel too slow or too fast at times, it packs its punches where it needs to and tells everything that needs to be told; there are actually not many elements you could take out of any one book and have the whole thing have the same story impact. Which is a sign of great writing.

   Okay, and finally - the characters. Major spoilers coming up in this bit. Darren, the narrating protagonist, is arguably quite bland and overdependent on luck or contrivance for his victories; but I don't have a problem with this for two reasons: firstly, bear in mind that he is functioning not only as a vampiric being in his own right but also as the "innocent" audience-explanatory bridge into that world, and the tensions of this probably made him pretty hard to write about, let alone from; secondly, aside from the fact that luck is a touchstone of vampire religion anyhoo and so this is a silly criticism, I actually think the ways in which his successes are contrived are well-explained enough by the lore to be able to overlook this criticism as well. My primary gripe with Darren as a whole lies at the very beginning of his story - I know he had to save Steve, but the kid we're introduced to at the start of the book just deciding that becoming a half-vampire vampire's assistant for the rest of his now-much-longer life is a step he's willing to take to see his friend survive struck me as something of a leap. But now we've mentioned Steve, so let's talk about Steve; and, oh, Steve Leonard/Leopard, why are you the way that you are? Getting rejected by Mr Crepsley must have been a blow, but a blow serious enough to devote your entire life to hunting and killing vampires, even becoming a vampaneze (even the Vampaneze Lord later on), in order to enact vengeance upon? As a revenge motive it doesn't quite ring true. But then, Mr Crepsley did say his blood had darkness in it; and we can kind of see this - Steve is by any account not a nice kid at the start of the series, even though he's Darren's best friend; and the fact that even at such a young age he devoted so much time and effort into researching the occult does sound the warning gong to my ears. The "I can taste evil in his blood" explanation is a little hokey but it feeds directly into the final set of conflicts and betrayals in the last six books so I can accept it. Next up, Mr Crepsley - and I've gotta say, I don't actually have much to say about him; the archetypal grouch-with-a-heart-of-gold that anyone plunged into the vampire world would want as their father substitute; my only complaint would be that he died too early, but it was entirely justified and in fact demanded by the story, so, yeh. Then of course Kurda Smalht/Harkat Mulds - the Vampire Prince who turned traitorous ally-to-the-vampaneze and was executed then brought back as a Little Person to aid Darren and Mr Crepsley in their quests. I just love this character, on both sides of his afterlife. Or however the story's internal metaphysics is meant to conceptualize this kind of transformation, I'm not entirely clear. Kurda is a brilliant vampire character for his willingness to transgress the strictly-upheld norms of his society with excellent reasoning behind why he does what he does, even if you (as the readers) won't notice or appreciate it at the time. Harkat is just a fantastically different, sturdy, amusing absolute dude who brings a weird kind of morbid liveliness into every scene he plays any significant role in. Oh man, there are so many great characters in this series that I would be here all night if I were to talk about all of them; Debbie and Alice Walker, Vancha March, Seba Nile, Gavner Purl, Mr Tall, RV... the list continues. But the final one I will talk about here is, you guessed it, that most superlatively sinister of evil entities, Mr Tiny. I think Shan in writing Tiny as the supreme antagonist to the whole saga is a stroke of pure brilliance; he's so unassuming in his depiction and yet oozes a malevolence in dialogue that very few "bad guys" achieve and the whole thing strikes a totally discombobulating inscrutability that genuinely sets you on edge. And then as the series progresses from your first introduction to Mr Tiny and you see, or rather come to suspect via hearsay (which only adds to the mystique) of all the truly heinous acts he has committed, the schemes he's schemes, the machinations he's machinated; and by the revelation of his final goals in the last sub-trilogy you are literally even rooting for the vampaneze over Mr Tiny.

   As I think I may have mentioned in my post about the first instalment of this series, this is a saga I've read before - but only once, when I was about fourteen. Revisiting it as an adult I still enjoyed it a great deal; in fact probably moreso in many places as I was able to appreciate the depth of obvious plot-planning and integrated world-building that Shan has put into this, as I was reading it, from knowing what was coming up. There were also many bits that I'd forgotten and were great second-time-round surprises that even with foresight the text itself does make it hard to see coming. I'd strongly recommend this to teenage readers with a thing for horror or fantasy, all the way down to age eleven or so if you're a kid with a strong stomach - because dark and gruesome as it is, it's the kind of thing that will exhilarate you far more than give you nightmares. Though it may well do that too. You have been warned...

Lord of the Shadows

This book is the eleventh and penultimate instalment of Darren Shan's vampire saga (see post about the first one to get a handle on how I'm doing posts about the whole series).

   Obviously, ramping up to the end of the saga, a lot of plot threads are starting to wind up their intensity toward the ultimate climax. In this instalment, having completed their quest in mystical far-away lands, Darren and Harkat are plunged back into the vampire-vampaneze war - even as our narrator journeys back to his hometown, dark revelations are brewing that throw the future of vampire and vampaneze both into existential turmoil...

the Lake of Souls

This book is number ten in Darren Shan's vampire saga (see post about number one for how I'm handling posts about the whole series).

   Starting off our fourth and final sub-trilogy within the overall saga, this book is where things all in all start to get really wacky. Taking a time-out from the vampire-vampaneze war, Darren and Harkat are sent by the devilish Mr Tiny on a fantastical quest across strange lands, encountering bizarre beasts and testing ordeals; their objective - to reach the lake of souls, basically a giant pond in which the spirits of people who haven't reached the afterlife properly swim about for basically eternity, and fish out one particular soul (of whom, for sake of spoilers, I will not say until my post about the final book).

Killers of the Dawn

This book is number nine in Darren Shan's vampire saga (see post about the first one for my explanation of how I'm handling posts for the series).

   So, in this one - the culmination of the saga's third sub-trilogy - Darren and Mr Crepsley find themselves beset on all sides, with enemies new and old, the police, vigilante vampire-hunters, and more, all chasing them down; leading to an intensely dramatic climax which I won't spoil until my post about the last book...

Allies of the Night

This book is number eight in Darren Shan's vampire saga (see post about the first one for how I'm handling posts about this series).

   Aside from the fact that the vampire-vampaneze war is raging and Darren and his comrades Mr Crespley, Harkat Mulds and Vancha March are right in the thick of it, new problems seem to be surmounting on all sides. First off, there's a vampire hunter on their trail. Then old faces start popping up in new, surprising ways (saving all spoilers for my post about the last one). And worst of all... someone has told the police that Darren (who despite being several decades old at this point, because of the vampiric aging process still has the body of a fifteen-or-so-year-old) isn't going to school! So yeh, that's the nub of this instalment.

Hunters of the Dusk

This book is number seven in Darren Shan's vampire saga (see post about the first one for an explanation of how I'm handling the posts for this series).

   Six years have passed since Darren's ascension to become the youngest Vampire Prince (oop, spoiler there - sorry) and the war against the vampaneze is raging. Following the prophecy from the mystical-but-super-evil Mr Tiny that a vampaneze Lord will arise and end the vampires forever, unless one of our heroes finds and ends him; Darren is thus embarked on a hunt for this enemy leader along with Mr Crepsley, the blue-robed Harkat Mulds, and another of the Princes, one Vancha March (who, say what you will about this series, but he's a super cool character).

the Vampire Prince

This book is number six in Darren Shan's vampire saga (see post about number one for how I'm handling posts about this series).

   Having performed questionably in the vampire trials, and experienced several other dramatic events which for spoiler reasons I won't mention here, Darren at the outset of this instalment finds himself an exile living among wolves. But the vampaneze are up to something, and nobody but our narrator seems to know. So he risks everything to return to Vampire Mountain, where a crowning ceremony for the next Vampire Prince is about to take place. Needless to say, his arrival and his news cause quite the stir...

Trials of Death

This book is the fifth instalment of Darren Shan's vampire saga (see post about the first for explanation of my treatment of this series post-wise).

   Having arrived and settled at Vampire Mountain, things are not all  hunky-dory, as it is soon decided that Darren, for a variety of variably-legitimate/odd reasons, has to undergo the Vampire Trials, which are extremely dangerous. And so it is that he undergoes a horrendously intense training regime, and all his friends are extremely worried about him. Then the trials - he has to dodge a bunch of spouts of fire coming out of the floor, crawl through a cavern filled with super-sharp stalactites and stalagmites, fight a wild boar, and to top it all - contend with the arcane politics of the vampire Generals themselves...

Vampire Mountain

This book is the fourth in Darren Shan's vampire saga (see the post about the first one for how I'm treating posts for this series).

   In this instalment, Darren and his master Mr Crepsley are called to the administrative capital of the vampire world - the eponymous mountain. Their journey is long and hard, but softened by the presence of the supremely likeable Gavner Purl. Once at the mountain we are introduced to a whole host of other cool characters, like the smooth sharp Kurda Smahlt, the quartermaster Seba Nile, and more. We are also treated to several insights about the nature of the evil Mr Tiny and his blue-robed servants, but for spoiler reasons I will save all reflections about any series-spanning themes/elements to the final post.

Tunnels of Blood

This book is the third in Darren Shan's vampire saga (see my post about the first one for how I'm dealing with writing up my thoughts on the whole series).

   Mr Crepsley has been called by the Vampire Generals onto a secret mission, and he takes Darren and Evra with him. They settle in a city and try to keep a low profile, but Darren befriends a girl called Debbie regardless. All is not well however - corpses drained of blood keep turning up, and Darren suspects his master is behind it. That is, until we meet the real culprit - a mad vampaneze* called Murtagh - and the shit hits the fan...

* Sort of cousins to vampires, the key difference being that vampaneze always kill their victims by drinking all their blood instead of just a little bit, as proper vampires do.

the Vampire's Assistant

This book is the second instalment in Darren Shan's vampire saga (see my post about the first one for how I'm doing my posts about the series).

   Now serving as Mr Crepsley's assistant, Darren is thrown into the madcap life of a travelling freak show. He befriends the performing snake-boy Evra Von, as well as local normal kid Sam and an eco-warrior called RV. Without wanting to give away too many spoilers, this new circle of friends causes a lot of problems for the Cirque de Freak, with bloody brutal consequences...