The Demonata and the saga of Darren Shan share the same universe.
Ok I like to think that Darren Shan's two series share the same universe. This would mean that Mr Tiny is a demon possibly a Demon Master. The Wolf Man is a werewolf like in the Demonata and that bit in the last book
where there are those monsters in Mr Tiny's place they are demons as well. Or maybe
seeing as the whole universe was recreated at the end of the Demonata and in the new universe is the saga of darren shan's universe and Lord Loss and Mr Tiny are one and the same.
- I'm pretty sure Lord Loss isn't really bound by any sort of laws of reality. However, everything else would be plausible, if it weren't for the fact that there are no demons there. Evanna talks of them crossing over if the laws of the universe are broken. In fact, not only that but it's implied that once this happens they'll slaughter everyone everywhere. Not exactly what happens in the Demonata. (Although I suppose what happened in Bec's time seems similar.)
- The demons certainly do try to slaughter everyone they see, but the difficulty in crossing over allows for the Disciples to stop them before they manage to cause too much trouble. Should the laws of reality break to the point where the demons can freely cross over, it would be little trouble for them to win the ensuing war. Keep in mind, some demons are the size of small countries. Just the impact of one teleporting in over the planet and falling would cause massive devastation, let alone if it could fight.
- Jossed. The author has said in an AMA that he thinks the whole "creator's verse" thing is cheesy.
The Saga of Darren Shan takes place in our reality.
- At the end of the series, Little Person Darren goes back in time and scares young Darren away before he sees Steve admit that he knows that Mr. Crepsley is a vampire. This allows for Darren and Steve to go on with their lives and let someone else interfere in the war and fight to become the Lord of Shadows. He then gives his diary to Mr. Tall and asks him to change the names and publish them as a book, allowing the world to see what really happened. This implies that not only is the story taking place in our universe (where it was published), but that the war might be occurring right now....
- Explicitly acknowledged in-narrative; the original Darren 'asks' Mr Tall to give the diary to his alternate self at approximately the time as when his original self 'died', as this would limit the risk of it actually changing anything that had happened originally.
Seba was a proto-Darren
- In the end of book 12, Evanna tells Darren that he can control animals because he's Desmond Tiny's biological son. Seba isn't the only other character who can control animals — Larten can, too, to some extent (then again, would he have been able to do it so well were he not trained by Seba?) — but there's also the fact that Seba was not only alive, but very young when the Vampaneze broke away and that war happened, and Tiny came and gave the vampires the Hall of Princes and the Stone of Blood. It could be possible that Tiny planted two human sons in that time, had them grow to become enemies and lead opposite sides, and had it build just like Darren and Steve... but when they failed to build to the level of carnage he wanted — maybe the circumstances didn't align to have Seba become the hero of the moment and be made a Prince, or maybe Seba refused — he allowed them to have a ceasefire and started laying the groundwork (e.g. the Coffin of Fire) to try again in 700 years with another of his sons — Seba's grand-pupil. (Why else would he have focused like that on Larten in the prequel saga? In-universe, that is.)
Darren goes to the Lake of Souls because he died in a river
- In book 5, Mika mentions a superstition that if a vampire dies in flowing water, their soul can't go to Paradise. The book 12 interlude spends a lot of time dwelling on the fact that Darren died in a river, and how good the rushing water felt compared to the stillness of the Lake. If that's why, then it makes more sense than saying that he's somehow guilty while Larten is innocent enough to go to Paradise, despite all those people he killed on the ship, and so many other things — he did pretty much literally everything Darren did, but for a longer time.
- Some metaphysical systems believe that you can kill tons of people but as long as you believe you're in the right, it's not a sin and it doesn't weigh on your soul or affect what the afterlife gives you. Unsettling though that may be, maybe this series is using one of those.
- In this series, the Lake of Souls isn't like a hell or purgatory, it isn't another realm, it is literally staying behind on Earth as a ghost, because of your regrets. In that case, people would "go" wherever they believe they should go. That would also explain how Cyrus ended up in the Lake of Souls. The vampires consider him a traitor, but by what stretch of the imagination could he have owed more loyalty to the clan as a whole than to Kurda, who (to guess from his activities towards the end of Larten Saga) probably blooded Cyrus after rescuing him from some of the worst things humans have ever done to each other. For that matter, how do Kurda's own actions at that time not outweigh his actions in books 5-6? The answer can only be that it's a matter of belief. That Kurda and Cyrus felt so much remorse for trying to save people who didn't want to be saved, that it drove them to the Lake of Souls. If that's the case, "Paradise" is probably full of violent braggarts with no empathy.
After the end of the story, a cult springs up around Harkat:
- He's the first Little Person who can talk, and he came bearing a fatal message about the future.
- The rumor of who he originally was is bound to spread, but they'd all still try to keep it quiet... which would just make it seem all that more mystical. The story of that Council will quickly pass into legend and be elaborated and exaggerated — in book 5, Darren was already hearing stories about himself getting changed that way within less than two weeks. This was one of the most pivotal moments in vampire history. With no photos or reliable written records, everyone's story is bound to be different after a few years of high emotion.
- That said, Kurda was right. And many of the vampires likely started to feel that way even before Tiny pointed it out in 7. But of course, they'd never admit it — which leads to a lot of pent-up emotion about it.
- Add his literal, actual, verifiable return from death (and after a messy execution for rebellion), and people will start to exaggerate the parallels between him and a certain other religious figure who returned from death (and who had an ultra-naturalistic "wild" mentor), and...
- It's never stated how long Harkat's body will last. He apparently didn't disintegrate after Darren died (and his "mission" was therefore a "failure"), so... will he age like a human? Like a vampire? Is he immortal?
Only people related to the vampires/vampaneze can go to the Lake of Souls:
- The souls in the Lake of Souls aren't really dead. Somehow, if a person is dying who has strong regrets, and those regrets are connected to the vampires/vampaneze, Tiny can somehow catch their soul before they fully die and trap it in the Lake. He does this specifically for the purpose of creating his Little People. Off the top of my head, I can't remember any concrete confirmation in canon that anyone was in the Lake of Souls who was definitely not a vampire or vampaneze. The only thing suggesting otherwise that I can think of is that Spits pulled up some of their bodies and ate them, but Spits was placed there by Tiny, so Tiny could have done something to him to make him survive that.
Darren and Steve are more powerful than Mr. Tiny, they just don't know it:
- Disclaimer: This theory was inspired by the beginning of the song "No Good Deed" from Wicked, in which the main character attempts to save someone she loves by casting a spell to prevent him from being harmed, and, Literal Genie style, inadvertently turns him into a scarecrow (the Scarecrow). The double-meaning spell in the lyrics also might sound a lot like Harkat. So, what if Darren prayed something like that at the time of Kurda's execution, and that gave Mr. Tiny the idea to create Harkat — in whatever place and time that happened in.
- The timing isn't an issue here. So, Tiny goes back in time and changes things. He's done this many times over the course of history, to create his perfectly, entertainingly destructive and traumatizing world. He also sees "the future" (or, any number of possible futures. Even though, according to Evanna's description of time travel in the end, "the past" is more-or-less "fixed", there are plenty of holes in the setup as she describes it, and she could be entirely wrong — Tiny could have lied to her about it her whole life, and she has no other source of information about it. So, Darren's "prayer" — because that's all it would have been, not a conscious spell, but a plea to any god that would listen, that he does likely still believe is out there. Of course, the closest thing to a god there is in this world is Tiny.
- It's possible that Tiny heard the prayer and consciously accepted it, thinking "you have no idea how well I can make that happen".
- But what if Darren is a real Reality Warper, and influenced Tiny into bringing Kurda back the same way that Tiny influenced him to grab the Cirque ticket, Larten to blood him, Arrow to nominate him, etc.? The idea of a half-Tiny, half-human being is unprecedented, and no one knows what their powers might be... and with Darren and Steve dying in canon, no one would ever find out. It's possible that it extends that far...
