The landing. Not as cold as downstairs. I try my bedroom, then Gret's. Empty. Very warm. The chess pieces on Gret's board are also missing. Mine haven't been taken, but they lie scattered on the floor and my board has been smashed to splinters. 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? The door opens. Gret - smiling shyly. I'm nineteen days into my sentence. Full of hate for Gretelda Grotesque. She's the last person I want to see.

I loved these characters a lot more than I liked the ones in Lord Loss; there was just something about all the characters on a whole that I liked more. Maybe because we could see everyone’s personality’s in a different light, when they were younger and not through the judging eyes of Grubbs Grady. The characters in Demon Thief are also a lot funnier and all though the situation is bad these characters are able to make light of it.Mum hugs me, then kisses me. I can't remember the last time she kissed me. There's something desperate about it. Kernel then shows Beranbus how, when concentrating on making portals to anything that's with them, the lights don't pulse. For anything that's not with them, the lights pulse. When concentrating on the promised piece of the weapon, the lights don't pulse, and Kernel concludes that the piece of the Kah Gash must be him. 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!

But it's not like I can tell her, is it? I can't pipe up with, "Oi! Mother! You're disgracing us both, so shut yer trap!" What's wrong, Gretelda?" I giggle, fending her off, calling her by the name she hates. She normally calls me Grubitsch in response, but she's too mad to think of it now. There's violence and gore - from someone dead being used as a finger puppet, to beheadings, and even a bizarre story about the original owner of the house getting rid of a baby he didn't want by feeding it to his pet piranhas. It's not continuous, but it's brutal in the scenes which are meant to be horrifying. Of course these scenes hold up strong in their tensions. You never know what the author will pull out of his hat, after all. The thing about Darren Shan that I appreciate is that the child characters are not sanitised little genius saints who are basically mouthpieces for the author's agenda. They are not mouthpieces to tell kids what the author believes is wrong with the real world now, like so many YA books are right now. These are children who can be rude and are boisterous, they can be annoying and selfish, but they are all relatable. Not out there to flatter the kids and tell them what to think.Three days after my early release. To say things are strange is the understatement of the decade. The atmosphere's just like it was when Gran died. Mum and Dad wander around like robots, not saying much. Gret mopes in her room or in the kitchen, stuffing herself with sweets and playing chess nonstop. She's like an addict. It's bizarre. I don't know what's going on, but now that I know I'm not set to go toes-up, I'm determined to see it through with them. I don't care what sort of a mess they're in. I won't let Mum, Dad and Gret freeze me out, no matter how bad it is. We're a family. We should face things together. That's what Mum and Dad always taught me.

And he is bald, gosh, no wonder girls don't like him too much, but those bitches would stand in line for him if they read this book And I know instantly - Gret grassed me up to Mum! She found out I was smoking and she told. The cow! In solitude, I call Gret every name under the moon the first night. Mum and Dad bear the brunt of my curses the next. After that I'm too miserable to blame anyone, so I sulk in moody silence and play chess against myself to pass the time. Grubbs Grady lives with his chess-obsessed parents and sister, Gret. After pulling a prank on her, he's grounded. But after a while, his parents end his grounding early, and he gets treated special. When his parents and Gret go out, he's knows something's going on. He sneaks out of his aunt's house, goes home and finds his parents and sister dead, horribly and gruesomely murdered. The killers? Demons. 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.I loved Darren Shan's Cirque Du Freak series (I mean, seriously, almost literally drooled over waiting for each edition of those books...) so set myself the goal of reading his other series as well. This sounded the more interesting, so this is the one I've started with. Demon Thief is the second in the series and it was funny (a lot more than the first, I loved it but it was so serious), scary (we got to see where the demons lived), and generally awesome. Studying my hair in the mirror. Stiff, tight, ginger. Dad used to be ginger when he was younger, before the grey set in. Says he was fifteen or sixteen when he noticed the change. So, if I follow in his footsteps, I've only got a handful or so years of unbroken ginger to look forward to.

I can beat just about anyone my age - I've won regional competitions - but I'm not in the same class as Mum, Dad or Gret. Gret's won at national level and can wipe the floor with me nine times out of ten. I've only ever beaten Mum twice in my life. Dad - never. While the book outshines in its creepiness, it's also unexpectly vulnerable at times. You DO really start to feel for the characters, no matter how bad they act in the beginning. There's beautiful moments in this. Darren Shan is really good at writing mentor relationships where the main character gets a second father. It works really well in this series. Although not the most frightening of books it was certainly spine tingling, I'm not easily scared but the book managed to create such realistic visions of the demons in my mind, even the finest of details being given to us by the narator - Grubitsch 'Grubbs' Grady. I look forward to reading the rest of the series, particularly if the others are as brilliant as this! Your loss." Dad clears his throat. "The ballet's out of town and finishes quite late. It will be easier for us to stay in a hotel overnight." I love rubbish dumps. You can find all sorts of disgusting stuff there. The perfect place to go browsing if you want to get even with your annoying traitor of a sister.They don't talk to me at meals. The three of them act like I'm not there. Gret doesn't even glance at me spitefully and sneer, the way she usually does when I'm getting the doghouse treatment.