[Recensione] Palace of the Damned - Darren Shan (The Saga of Darren Shan #3)

Hello, everyone! How are you? Today, after a long while, I present you my thoughts on the third book of this series.
As I did for the previews books, this review will be in English.
The other books in the series: Birth of a Killer, Ocean of Blood.

Have you read any book by Darren Shan? Which ones?


Title: The Saga of Larten Crepsley #3: Palace of the Damned

Author: Darren Shan

Genre: Horror 

Publishing House: Harper Collins UK

N. of pages: 236

Price: €2,77 (Kindle) / €8,65 (Paperback)

Link: Amazon (Kindle) / Amazon (Paperback)

Larten finds out what it means to love, but is he also damned to find out what it means to lose? Lost in the Arctic waste, carrying a baby whose love he could never deserve, Larten faces the darkest time he has ever known.

In the third book of his Saga, Larten grows quite a lot. He's got a baby to take care of, one he doesn't wish to be the father of. And, as he meets an old friend, Larten seems to find a life of peace. Or so he thinks, before all goes to Hell (or, better, to the Lake of Souls!).

As I said before, the Larten Crepsley books are a bit more mature than the Darren Shan saga. I'm sure a lot depends on the fact Larten's books are directed towards older readers, but I am also certain that it depends on the protagonist too.
In this third book, Larten mostly struggles in the Human world and finally finds his place in the Vampire world; he faces feelings of Love and Loss, he finds himself in hard places. And yet, he also finds his true family, and old characters we have learned to love in the Darren Shan saga reappear here to be a huge part of Larten's life.
This book, in particular, features my favourite character of the original Saga, and we get to know so much about him! I'm talking about Gavner Purl, of course. I don't want to spoiler anything, but I'm gonna say this: the final pages of this volume are now my favourite of the year. I do not care we're only in March. They win.

Speaking of characters... A lot of them we've met already. Vancha, Seba, Arra, Arrow, Mika, Evanna... We have the pleasure (or displeasure, depends if you like the character or not) to meet them in the past and see how they have evolved and how they became who they are in the Darren Shan Saga.
I was mostly pleased with the Arrow arc myself: this is the Vampire Prince we've had less information on in all the books, and in the original Saga he looks so... stoic. Here, we manage to see emotions. We get to see what makes him Human. Vampire. You understood, c'mon.
I also really like Arra. As always, she's got her priorities in check and has no time for lovebirds coming her way when she's got stuff to do. Go, Arra. Be the Vampire Princess we always deserved and never got.

But I have to say: I'm "angry" at the author this round.
This book contains one of my favourite scenes, concerning Seba and Larten. And I can't believe for the life of me that the author made Larten say the F-word (No, not the bad word) to Seba, and we didn't get a similar scene between Darren and Larten. I am extremely disappointed, here. Also gonna throw it in here, but Darren should've called Seba "grandpa" at least once. Don't fight me on this, I am right.

Speaking of style and language, I think, as a non-native English speaker, this is an accessible book. Okay, maybe you have to be at least a B1-level, but it's readable. I want to compare his children's books to his adult books and see how I feel.

Anyways, I got to the point that when I make games where someone has to guess what book I'm reading currently, they just go with "A Darren Shan one". Unfortunately, it's not always the case, but it says a lot about me raving about this author's books with my friends!

Buy it here: