My first Cirque du Freak!

Once again, I was wrong - and that's okay! I honestly didn't think I'd like Birth of a Killer by Darren Shan, but it moved quickly and definitely kept my attention. This is the first book of a trilogy written as a prequel to the Cirque du Freak series, and it tells the story of how Larten Crepsley became a vampire. Sounding like something out of a Dickens novel, Larten had a pretty rotten childhood, complete with working in a nasty factory under a brutal boss. After Larten is on the run (I won't tell you why), he's hiding in a cemetery crypt when he meets Seba, a 500-year-old vampire who asks Larten to be his assistant. The story covers several years, during which Larten meets up with the bizarre Cirque du Freak and eventually becomes "blooded" as a vampire. Is it better to read the prequel and then the regular series, or the other way around? My middle school readers would have the best answer to that....