Birth of a Killer (The Saga of Larten Crepsley #1)

by Darren Shan

Overview

The highly anticipated prequel to the New York Times bestselling Cirque Du Freak series!



Before Cirque Du Freak...

Before the war with the vampaneze...

Before he was a vampire.



Larten Crepsley was a boy.



As a child laborer many centuries ago, Larten Crepsley did his job well and without complaint, until the day the foreman killed his brother as an example to the other children.



In that moment, young Larten flies into a rage that the foreman wouldn't survive. Forced on the run, he sleeps in crypts and eats cobwebs to get by. And when a vampire named Seba offers him protection and training as a vampire's assistant, Larten takes it.



This is his story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316129145
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	10/05/2010
Series:	Saga of Larten Crepsley , #1
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Lexile:	870L (what's this?)
File size:	369 KB
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

Darren Shan is the bestselling author of the young adult series Cirque Du Freak, The Demonata, and the Saga of Larten Crepsley series, as well as the stand-alone book The Thin Executioner. His books have sold over 25 million copies worldwide. Shan divides his time between his homes in Ireland and London.

Editorial Reviews

Larten Crepsley watches as the brutal foreman at a silk factory drowns his cousin, Vur Horston. Moments later, Larten is a fugitive, having stabbed the foreman through the throat. As he cowers in a graveyard eating cobwebs, Larten gets a tempting offer from Seba Niles: work as Seba's assistant and, someday, become a vampire. Fans of Shan's Cirque Du Freak series will enjoy the origin story of their favorite orange-haired vampire, though the gore quotient has been greatly reduced from previous volumes. Cameos abound, from Desmond Tiny to Murlough to the Cirque Du Freak itself. Tidbits of explanation dangle promisingly, but never completely answer questions about character behaviors and motivations. The tapestry of relationships in the earlier works are deconstructed here to threads; it's a nice touch, but the technique makes this narrative less accessible to newcomers to the oeuvre, as it presumes familiarity with the characters and plots. Jumping back in time but keeping the same literary style, the author delivers a solid story. (Horror. YA)

Kirkus Reviews