SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Chapters Read: 13-18

These chapters were pretty fascinating. I genuinely forgot a ton of details at this stage of the series, it's wild just how much I forget sometimes.

The appearance of a dragon in this strange world is still mind-blowing. I'll never forget how surprising that was when I first read the series. Of course this is a fantasy series since it speaks on vampires, and a multitude of other paranormal/magical types of things. But in comparison to 'The Inheritance Cycle' and 'Harry Potter', 'Cirque Du Freak' always felt more realistic on the fantasy spectrum by those standards. In those other two series, magic is used actively and manipulated blatantly. 'Cirque Du Freak' has a simpler, cleaner ruleset. Hand-to-hand combat for the most part. It just has its own fantasy style. No spells, no potions etc.

But that's why this series is so fantastic to me. As the reader reading the tenth book, I'm already understanding and on board with how it's a fantasy series, but it's sort of a believable, grounded type of fantasy. But slowly, Mr. Tiny and Evanna start to peel back the depth of their abilities, and the depth of the world around them the series creates. Book ten is really where I begin to realize that this world's fantasy elements are much more complex than I originally thought.

In book ten, we're already in a story wildly different from any other installment. Unfamiliar terrain, slightly off animals, and more.

Now a DRAGON arrives. And I mean, dragons are perhaps my favorite fantasy creature ever. In fact, dragons are involved in every one of my Big Three favorite series I plan on reading! I never realized that. As soon as a dragon is involved, it simply is a call back, or a shout-out to all fantasy stories in general. To involve such a traditional fantasy creature all of a sudden says a lot in my opinion, and it's just so cool.

Then you include The Temple of the Grotesque and how strange that was, time travel set to be more clearly involved, and Harkat's wild lore set to take a more center stage, this series really feels a lot more like a traditional fantasy series all of a sudden! This series so far has been more of a horror, edgy, mysterious type of fantasy, and it is still, but injecting all this intrigue just takes the series to the next level for me.

It's just so impressive how deep this series gets. LAYERS.

I forgot Spits Abrams was even a character when Darren and Harkat discovered him! He's a pretty shady, reckless individual, but he's still somewhat helpful/friendly. I'm curious what his deal is exactly, because I forgot this man even existed!

But yeah, this section just furthered their quest as they approached The Lake of Souls. It was a pretty straightforward, yet entertaining chunk of chapters!

I believe this final section of the book is about to blow my mind.