Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare cover art

Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare

The Saga of Darren Shan, Book 1

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Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare

By: Darren Shan
Narrated by: Ralph Lister
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About this listen

In the tradition of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, New York Times best-seller Cirque du Freak is the first title in the popular Saga of Darren Shan series.

Darren Shan and his best friend, Steve, get tickets to the Cirque du Freak, a wonderfully gothic freak show featuring weird, frightening half human/half animals who interact terrifyingly with the audience. In the midst of the excitement, true terror raises its head when Steve recognizes that one of the performers - Mr. Crepsley - is a vampire!

Steve confronts the vampire after the show finishes - but his motives are surprising! In the shadows of a crumbling theater, a horrified Darren eavesdrops on his friend and the vampire, and is witness to a monstrous, disturbing plea. As if by destiny, Darren is pulled to Mr. Crepsley and what follows is his horrifying descent into the dark and bloody world of vampires.

This is Darren’s story.

©2013 Darren Shan (P)2013 Blackstone Audio Scary Fantasy Fiction

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All stars
Most relevant  
A slower start to the series than I had remembered, but still fun. The reading performance really put me off at first - much too childish than the material deserves - but it did get better towards the end.

Fun but a patchy performance

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Loved this series as a early-teen. Even met Mr Shan a few times in bookshops and enjoyed a couple of live readings from him too.

Has been over 15 years since I last read this story and it holds up surprisingly well.

Solid story without too much young adult nonsense to induce cringing. Great all-round performance from the narrator.

Looking forward to the rest.

Childhood classic

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Takes me back to my younger days when I read this series. Amazing narrative well done

Loved this book

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I was 7 when I first read this book and started the series over 20 years ago, beyond excited that I stumbled across it on audible. Holds up, interesting characters and very well narrated.
Looking forward to finishing the series again, it’s like meeting up with old friends.

Nostalgia that holds up

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The story has always been good but the narration isn’t on par with what I thought it would be. Bit too heavy in posh accents for adults for whatever reason

Decent

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While I love both the saga of Darren Shan and the demonata books I felt the americanisation too jarring .
pounds changed to dollars .. football changed to soccer.
but would still recommend that you give the audiobooks a try.

Great Series

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My 10 Yr old adores this collection and is now getting to be an acid reader alongside the books on audible. This was exactly what he needed.

10yr olds favourite book

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Absolutely loved these books, great audiobook. However… the language has been Americanised (soccer, dollars, etc) which is weird even though the narrator is English. Just sounds odd. Otherwise fantastic

Nostalgia

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I remember watching the movie this was slightly based off this is so much better

Better the movie

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love Darren Shan books and hadn't read them in soo long. re- reading amazing 🥰❤

absolutely amazing!!

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