Remember how positive I was about last week's book? The book Carlos Ruiz Zafón wrote before The Angel's Game but which takes place after the events of this week's novel. Where The Shadow of the Wind takes your breath away in all the complicated story lines and numerous characters who appear in the novel for no reason whatsoever, The Angel's Game dulls the senses completely.
It's translated by the same translator, Lucia Graves, so it's definitely not the language that's not great about this novel. It's still poetic as its predecessor. I can open up a random page and read a random line and it would still sound beautiful: "The train came in almost an hour late, a serpent of steam slithering beneath the storm" (Zafón 99). So if it isn't the style and the language. What is so wrong about this novel?
The story line! Like I said before The Shadow of the Wind is complicated, but it pulls you in. Also the ending makes sense. In The Angel's Game it doesn't. Remember that this book takes plays years before Daniel Sempere is born.
It's about a young writer David Martin who is down on his luck. He is fired from the newspaper where he has worked is whole life. He is in love with a beautiful girl Cristina who is very close to his best friend Vidal. He is basically alone in this world. When his life seems hopeless he is approached by a man dressed in white who tells him to write him a book. A book which, like any religious work, should make people want to follow it. After he agrees a whole series of events unravels, which are too complicated for me to write down and I don't think it would help if I would try to untangle it anyway. The novel does not make much sense and it is long winded. Most of the characters die and at the end I still don't know why. And I don't feel like finding it out... I think Zafón should write a book that matches The Shadow of the Wind otherwise his four book series will be a complicated disaster..
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