Slawter

Slawter is the third book in the Demonata series by Darren Shan, published in 2006. It moves the series away from Grubbs Grady's home town and onto the set of a horror film being shot in a remote location.

Grubbs goes with his uncle Dervish to the production, expecting to be bored by the process and uncomfortable around the people making it. His earlier encounter with Lord Loss left him with a precise idea of what demons are capable of, so he is far more alert than the actors to the possibility that the monsters in the script are not entirely imaginary. The production turns out to be the instrument of exactly the sort of plan he has been dreading, and Grubbs has to work out which member of the cast or crew is responsible before the film gets the ending it has been arranged to produce.

Shan's series is horror for teenagers, fast and gruesome, with a war between humans and demons running underneath the individual stories. This volume reads as a self-contained encounter, though it assumes a reader who has already met Lord Loss.