Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare is the first book in the Saga of Darren Shan series written by Darren Shan.

Plot:
Darren and Steve are best friends, even though Steve got kind of wild lately. One day they find a flyer advertising the Cirque du Freak. Excited, Darren and Steve go there. Much to their surprise, the “freaks” there are actually supernaturally gifted and the boys get quickly caught up in that world.

Cirque du Freak is a series for kids/young adults, and I’m sure that twelve, thirteen year olds do enjoy it. I was pretty bored reading it. Nothing much happens, it’s badly written and the plot is obvious within about the first ten pages of the book.

Therer were a few things that annoyed me during the read. The first thing was that I just didn’t know how old Darren was. (Maybe it’s mentioned somewhere but then I overlooked it.) I mean, in the movie, he’s about 16. In the book, he continually refers to himself as a child, which no sane 16-year old would ever do. I guess, not even a twelve-year old would. Sometimes I’d think he’s twelve, then I’d think he’s 14, then ten, then forty-trying-to-be-thirteen. And while I wouldn’t care about it if the books were about a 30-something guy, in that age group it’s important to know that stuff.

The other thing was the overzealous use of exclamation marks and italics. And if something was really, really, really exciting there would be exclamation marks and italics! It’s nice to use this stuff for emphasis but when every second sentence ends with an exclamation mark, it gets tired very fast.
Also, the stuff being emphasised was usually pretty ridiculous.

I mean, I get it, it’s supposed to be how a young boy would write (and it probably is, at that), but it still annoyed the hell out of me.

Well. Add to that the I didn’t find the characters very compelling (if you can call them characters) and that the story is so freaking obvious and you’ll know why I won’t be continuing to read this series.