SHAN, DARREN - THE DARREN SHAN SAGA 3 – TUNNELS OF BLOOD 2001 Harper Collins.
The book begins with a teaser chapter in
which Darren, the half-vampire, is clearly trying to kill his Master, Mr.
Crepsley, a full vampire. The
circumstances leading to this intense drama are then related in the first half
of the book. Darren has to leave the Vampire Circus to go with Mr. Crepsley to
the big city. Evra, the snake boy accompanies them. Mr. Crepsley has some unspecified business in the city, and he
refuses to talk to the boys about it. They just see him coming and going at odd
times. Darren meets a young woman,
called Debbie, with whom he is starting to fall in love, but he is unable to
admit to being a vampire, so she finds his behaviour strange. She is however
very sympathetic to Evra’s scaly skin problem (without knowing its real
nature). Darren finds a newspaper
report on the viscous murders occurring in the city. Bodies have been found
drained of blood. Darren realizes that the deaths coincide with Mr. Crepsley
movements. He decides to follow the Master on e night. He sees him following
another man into some underground tunnels. Darren watches as Mr. Crepsley
clearly prepares to kill the man. Darren’s attack on Mr. Crepsley (seen in the
opening chapter) is now explained. Darren attacks his master, and the man about
to have been attacked, escapes. Angered, and then understanding, Mr. Crepsley
explains what happened. The man he was stalking was the murderer. He was trying
to catch him. The killer is in fact a member of a separate vampire species,
known as The Vampaneze. The Vampaneze believe that it is a vampire’s sacred
duty to kill humans to save their souls and that it is OK to kill people in
order to feed. This philosophy has led to war between vampires and Vampaneze
for generations. There is however even the Vampaneze regards a truce, and the
killer as a renegade and a psychotic. They are afraid that his actions could
make the people of the world aware of vampires. Darren and his allies now set up a trap for the killer Vampaneze.
They use Darren’s friend Debbie as bait, and when the Vampaneze attacks here,
they kill him. Darren now makes Debbie forget about him forever by inducing
amnesia. (In fact she will return in a later book) An increasingly darker edge is
establishing itself, with many important threads developing for later work in a
compulsively readable horror story. . http://www.darrenshan.com/
© Copyright. Arthur
Chappell
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