Lord Loss is the first novel in the fictional Demonata series book by best-selling teenage horror author Darren Shan

Darren Shan

Darren O'Shaughnessy , who commonly writes under the pen name Darren Shan, is an Irish author. Darren Shan is also the main character in Shan's The Saga of Darren Shan young-adult fiction series. He also wrote The Demonata series as well as the stand-alone books, Koyasan and The Thin Executioner...

. It was originally published in the UK on 6 June 2005. Soon after, it appeared in Japan and America, where Shan's previous series, The Saga of Darren Shan

The Saga of Darren Shan

The Saga of Darren Shan is a young adult 12 part book series written by Darren Shan about the struggle of a boy who has become involved in the world of vampires. As of October 2008, the book is published in 37 countries around the world, in 30 different languages...

, had sold millions. The novel is set in Ireland and is told in present tense first person through Grubbs Grady

Grubbs Grady

Grubitsch "Grubbs" Grady is one of the main character in The Demonata series by Darren Shan. He is the protagonist of the first book , the third , the fifth the sixth , the eighth and the tenth...

, a child whose family are all chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 players.
Grubitsch "Grubbs" Grady, the younger child of chess-obsessed parents, grows increasingly uneasy with the recent strange, nervous behaviour of his parents and sister.