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David Martín is a writer of penny dreadfuls who is offered a huge sum of money to write a book for a French publisher. He can’t find any evidence that the publisher actually exists though, and violent things start happening to David’s friends and colleagues.
I was rocking through the first half of the book, loving Ruiz Zafón’s writing, and then I just stopped caring a little over halfway through. I’m not entirely sure what happened. I think I got sick of having absolutely no freaking idea what was going on. Yeah, I knew who the publisher was, but I didn’t know how that was going to tie into everything else. I read this using this really cool post-it-flag bookmark my husband gave me, because I knew that I would probably have tons of quotes I loved in here. The last one is at page 324 out of 531 pages. There’s no big event that I can find there, I think that’s just where I ran out of patience.
I loved Ruiz Zafón’s previous book, The Shadow of the Wind, and I have a feeling that a re-read would bump that one up to five stars. I missed having a Fermín. There wasn’t really anyone to give any lightness or grace to the story. It was all darkness and despair. The relationship between David and Isabella gave a few lighter moments, but he ended up hurting her feelings more often than not, so those were pretty limited. This is sort of a companion to Shadow, and I had a hard time figuring out how and when they fit together. I was confused about how Daniel was consistently described as being shy and sort of boring, when that wasn’t the Daniel that I knew from Shadow. I don’t think this is a
*****SPOILER*****, but
this Daniel is the father in Shadow.
******END*****
I have to say, my hat is off to the translator, Lucia Graves. She did one heckuva job translating this. The story might have lost me a little, but the writing is still lyrical, and that has to be as much to her credit as to the author’s.
Maybe I should have put this aside and tried it again later when I realized that I had started to lose interest. I don’t think that would have made a difference though. It’s still a dark, Gothic novel that fans of that genre will still probably love. I just preferred The Shadow of the Wind much, much more.
5 Comments
It wasn’t Daniel who was shy. If you take into account the time period in which this was set, The angel’s game is set before The shadow of the Wind. Therefore Sempere’s son in The angel’s game is Daniel’s father in The Shadow of the wind. If you had finished the story you would have found out in the end, alongside the woman who marries Sempere’s son who becomes Daniel’s mother. My opinion is that I do agree with the fact that this book has a darker mood compared to The Shadow of the wind, yet I think it’s much more thought provoking in terms of symbolism and the reality of life. I think if you had finished the book it would have made sense.
I did finish the book (I clearly rate unfinished books as DNF at the top of my posts) but I lost interest in it halfway through. I chugged through anyway and finally made the connection. It’s been 15 years since I reviewed this so I can’t address any of your other comments. Thanks for stopping by!
It was still beautiful, so you guys might like it. You should check out Alison's review to see what someone who loved it has to say.
Okay, I take that comment from you What are you reading post back, I won't die if I don't read this. Thanks for the review!
When I saw that you wrote a review of one of my favorite books of the year (so far) I had to come by and check out what you had to say. What a nice surprise that you linked to my review!
I don't give out stars lightly, but I definitely agree with you that Angel's Game was not the breathtakingly beautiful novel that Shadow of The Wind was. Still, I loved it.
Great review – always great to read another reviewer's point of view!