First and foremost, I am horribly ashamed that it took me this long to actually get my hands on a copy of Darren Shan's Procession of the Dead. Because man, it is effing awesome, the premises are intriguing, whenever you think it's about time you take a break, you find that you can't because you're on a goddamn ride, and it's too much of a cliffhanger to stop then and there.

The first couple of chapters were pretty weak, in the sense that the author was like trying to hurry things over, briefly fast forward the backstory and get to the action, and really, the world that is created is strange. I can't exactly make out the time, as in when and where this story is meant to be set in; there isn't too much details being given (or maybe I overlook in my haste) but it doesn't really matter in the end, because there is so much more to it.

I wasn't exactly too fond of the narrator originally, he sounded too much like a wannabe gangster, and too little personality, like there wasn't really a person but just a voice narrating... but slowly, it seemed that the narrator developed, and his character became a little more defined, like there are actual traits instead of just him being there and being our eyes. I don't really like first person narration, but I think it works here because part of the story is in the intrigue and the mystery behind the Cardinal and how things are getting stranger and stranger slowly in the sense that I have no clue whether some people really did exist or maybe the narrator's just hallucinating or something.

And I think that's pretty cool. The whole idea of how existence is not really just knowing that you are physically there, but the idea that you are noticed by people and they react to you. You know that you are real and you exist because of these interactions, and not vice versa, but hey, it could just be me thinking that way, if you get my gist. Gods, I'm rambling here and people probably think I'm an idiot...

I'm about one third into the book, and I'm kind of mad at myself for not reading it earlier, because I'm too cheap to buy it until it's going for 3 bucks. >.> I should have known that Darren Shan always deliver, from his vampire saga to the Demonata series, he weaves fantastic stories, man.