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Monday, December 31, 2012

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón


The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Angel’s Game is Zafon’s second novel in the not-to-be-read-linearly Barcelona sequence. It’s a lovely mess of a novel, which only really holds together as an explanatory footnote to some of the events of its two more impressive siblings. The language here is usally good, though the diatribes on the motivation behind religion often comes across as a bit sophomoric. The events which occur range from cool to downright silly (the brawling action sequences which dominate one of the latter stages of the novel feel terribly out of place.) The strong presence of the supernatural in the novel all place The Angel’s Game a bit out of step with the other novels in the series, in which the existence of anything truly supernatural is left unclear. Not so here.

Ultimately, I quite like Zafon, and the trilogy of Barcelona novels centered around the Cemetery of Forgotten Books is a treat. But The Angel’s Game suffers from an abundance of plotting and pacing issues, and is without a doubt the least successful of the three. 

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