Killers of the Dawn

Killers of the Dawn is the ninth book of The Saga of Darren Shan by Darren Shan, published in 2003. It closes the Vampire War trilogy within the longer series.

Three separate forces are pursuing them, the vampaneze, the police and a mob, so the book's pressure comes from being hunted by more than one kind of enemy at once, and the vampires respond by preparing for open battle rather than continuing to hide. The hunters are outnumbered, outsmarted and on the run, and their enemies are calling for blood, so the response is to prepare for a battle rather than to keep hiding.

Because this volume ends a trilogy inside the sequence, its battle is a conclusion rather than an episode. Shan wrote the series as short first-person books in which each volume has its own crisis while advancing a longer war. The series runs to twelve books, and the first three volumes were the basis of the film released in 2009. A four-part prequel series followed between 2011 and 2012, telling the life of Larten Crepsley. The film of 2009 covered only the first three volumes, so this part of the sequence reached the screen only as print.