Death and gore

So I'm reading death books for the popular paperbacks committee. Last night I finished reading Lord Loss by Darren Shan.

Greg posted about this book in September 2006, so go re-read his post now! Anyway, I have always felt that true horror books are sometimes missing in teen literature. The ones that seem to be coming out most are the supernatural romances instead scary stories.

I've known that Darren Shan's Demonata series was the exception to this, but I still never got around to reading them. Now I had the perfect excuse. The paperback copy has a quote from the SLJ review that says something aobut how this will gross out anyone. It was right! The perfect mixture of horror and gore. Starting with Grubbs prank on his older sister--he put rats guts on her towel while she was in the shower. He thought it was hilarious--no one else did. But the image that stayed with me is when he walked into his parents' bedroom to find them murdered by demons. His father was beheaded and blood draining from his body. His sister sawed in half and made into a puppet for the demons' amusement. Perfection.

But Shan doesn't stop there. His first person, present tense writing makes the story have more anticipation and excitement. Shan makes Grubbs into a realistic character when he breaksdown and is placed in a mental institution. His fear is tangible throughout the novel. And even at the end I still wanted to read more. So now, I think I'll be bringing them with me on my vacation this summer!