Lord Loss (Book One of The Demonata): Book 1

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Yup. That guy after whom the book was named upon, and his two familiars Artery and Vein. HE ESCAPES THEM. Mum's staring at me with open disgust. Dad's shooting daggers. I sense that I'm the only one who sees the funny side of this. Do you think it's clever? Filling your lungs with rubbish, killing yourself? We didn't bring you up to watch you give yourself cancer! We don't need this, certainly not at this time, not when - "

One thing I love about the Demonata series is how the books, at least the first two, don’t seem to be related at all! When you start Demon Thief you have just finished Lord Loss and you’re expecting the story to continue but it doesn’t! It takes you into a completely different story with characters you’ve never met before, although Dervish does make an appearance. Purgatory. Confined to my room after school for a month. A whole bloody MONTH! No TV, no computer, no comics, no books - except schoolbooks. Dad leaves my chess set in the room too - no fear my chess-mad parents would take that away from me! Chess is almost a religion in this house. Gret and I were reared on it. While other toddlers were being taught how to put jigsaws together, we were busy learning the ridiculous rules of chess.

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Lord Loss is the debut novel of the Demonata series by Darren Shan. The book follows Grubbs Grady as he discovers a secret demonic world behind ours. After the tragic murder of his parents and sister at the hands of these demons he spends a bit of time in a mental institute before his uncle comes and gets him out. Over the course of the book, Grubbs learns about magic, demons and the curse that plagues his family. Naturally, he has to do battle with the very demon who killed his family, Lord Loss. Smoking's dumb," he says. We're in the kitchen (I haven't been out of it since Mum dragged me home from school early, except to go to the toilet). "It's disgusting, antisocial and lethal. Why do it, Grubbs? I thought you had more sense." I don't catch the rest of the insult - Gret flies down the stairs ahead of it. She drops her towel on the way. I don't have time to react to that before she's on me, slapping and scratching at my face. Lord Loss was the only Demon Master in the town of Slawter. Before the demons were released, he gave a speech to the crowd. He then unleashed his demon followers. He had a fight with Dervish and Grubbs, but eventually they escaped with the 34 survivors of the cast and crew. During his fight with Grubbs all his arms were severed, but after Grubbs ran away he regrew them using magic. Lord Loss vowed to make the Gradys' deaths even more long and painful, then proceeded to kill all the people remaining in Slawter in the most painful ways he could think of. AND PLEASE DONT READ THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVE EXTRAORDINARY IMAGINATION SKILLS AND HATE A MASSASCRE OF A FAMILY

I smirk at the thought, and of course that's when Mum pauses for the briefest of moments and catches me. "What are you grinning at?" she roars, and then she's off again - I'm smoking myself into an early grave, the school's responsible, what sort of a freak show is Mr. Donnellan running, la-di-la-di-la-di-bloody-la! The kitchen's cold. It shouldn't be - the sun's been shining all day and it's a nice warm night -but it's like standing in a refrigerator aisle in a supermarket. I adore the humour in this novel, it’s lighthearted, it doesn’t take away from the stress/pain of what the characters are going through, and it’s got the perfect balance of soft moments & hard moments. There’s a specific point at the end of the book that devastated me, but the humour really lifted things up, but didn’t take away the fact that something horrific just happened, it eases you into a sense of feeling safe, like you can breathe. When I was little, I wanted to be a writer and I was a bit obsessed with Zombies! probably that’s to blame on the game Resident Evil, not sure, but I remember I decided to write a story about a zombie apocalypse. Her rant at school's nothing compared to the one I get at home. Screaming at the top of her lungs, blue bloody murder. She's going to send me off to boarding school - no, military school! See how I like that, having to get up at dawn each morning and do a hundred press-ups before breakfast. How does that sound?

Plot Outline:

I trudge upstairs miserably, unable to see what all the aggro is about. It was a great joke. I laughed for hours when I thought of it. And all that hard work - chopping the rats up, mixing in some water to keep them fresh and make them gooey, getting up early, sneaking into her bathroom while she was asleep, carefully putting the guts in place - wasted! There are some disturbing/violent scenes throughout which are described in great detail so if you really hate gore I'd suggest skipping, but if you don't particularly mind gore I'd give it a go as it does feature a good story. The only thing that made this book not as interesting to me as the first was that I knew exactly what would happen. I think this is because I read the book a couple years ago and was drawing off that. I knew who the demon thief was from the very beginning. Because of this I was hurrying to finish the book and move on. But never the less I found it to still keep me enthralled. And I know instantly - Gret grassed me up to Mum! She found out I was smoking and she told. The cow!