We all know about vampires; they sleep in coffins during the day, and feast on human blood at night. In author Darren Shan’s world of Cirque du Freak, they go beyond typical horror story vampires and separate into two groups: the vampires and the vampaneze. They weren’t always this way though; they started off as half-vampires and half-vampaneze. No matter what you call them, they are all bloodthirsty, and none are “good”.
Vampires are most often told about in horror stories and movies, but what is Darren Shan’s take on these creatures of the night? Well, contrary to common belief, there is really not much to fear from these monsters. First, I would like to point out the fact that they don’t actually drain the victim of all their blood, or even turn humans into vampires while feeding. What really takes place is the vampire breathes some “knock-out gas” on the victim, and when they are knocked out is when they are fed on. Only a small amount of blood is taken, then the vampire uses their saliva (witch has healing powers) to heal the tiny wound. Vampires DO, however, sleep during the day, and often in coffins because they are sensitive to the sun and can only stand the harmful rays for a few short minutes before have to go back into the shade. They also have strong nails and can scale walls with them, but cannot fly, or turn themselves into bats. The CAN “flit”, though (run so fast that they are invisible to the human eye) and are extremely strong, but the theory that vampires are “ageless” is completely incorrect because vampires only age slowly, at the one tenth the human rate. Some other little known facts about Darren Shan’s vampires are that they are forbidden to use long range weapons (crossbows, guns, etc.) and they can’t reproduce, resulting in an extremely low number of female vampires.
Vampaneze are the little known cousins of the common vampire. They branched off of the vampire clan centuries ago because they believed that the humans they feed off of...