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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