The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Though it did take me nearly a week to read The Angel's Game, that had nothing to do with the quality of the book. Rather, it had to do with the fact that I've been up to my ears in working on my spreadsheet of colleges I might apply to, applying to scholarships, and that sort of thing. Every time I had a moment in which I allowed myself to pick up The Angel's Game, I was hooked within a couple of pages and continued reading furiously until responsibility (or lunch) called.

The Angel's Game is a prequel to the bestselling novel The Shadow of the Wind, a fact that I did not know until I was already into the book. Oops. I didn't realize this because I picked the book up off of the "new books" shelf in the YA section of my local library, and was only enlightened when I read Jess's review of The Shadow of the Wind on Park Benches and Bookends. Anyway, The Angel's Game takes place in 1920s Barcelona and follows young novelist David Martin, who writes popular novels under a pseudonym. Martin has finally attained residence in the old house where he wanted to live as a child when he receives a letter from mysterious French editor Andreas Corelli, who offers to pay him an enormous sum of money to write a book that will create a new religion. The further into his writing Martin gets, however, the more reluctant he becomes, and he and the people he cares about start to suffer for it.

The atmosphere, subject matter, and themes of The Angel's Game remind me of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, which I reviewed in June, and after taking a look at Zafon's website, I see that he and/or his publisher have made the same comparison. I'm not sure if that indicates my lack of originality, the validity of the claim, or both. Regardless, I really enjoyed The Angel's Game. I found its plot intriguing and its characters even more so, and even after finishing the book I still have questions. For me, this is a good thing - I don't always like everything to be tied up neatly. Fortunately, my library also has The Shadow of the Wind and The Prince of Mist, another book by Zafon, and I will be checking those out shortly...though perhaps I should wait until I finish my AP English required reading.

Until next time, happy reading!