Take a photo of a barcode or cover
mpop 's review for:
The Angel's Game
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
adventurous
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I hoped that this book would be an improvement over the first in the series, The Shadow of the Wind. It was not.
While the events are mostly unrelated to the first book (except for the Sempere bookstore), there were a lot of elements that felt recycled - the young man who's poor (and a virgin, which is very important for some reason) but has rich benefactor friends; falls in love with a gorgeous young woman mostly from afar; doesn't have a mother; and gets sucked into a big mystery. Also, it started off with a shrewish woman boardinghouse owner and boardinghouse residents who try to watch the neighbor woman have sex through the window, so that’s... not a big improvement on depictions of women from the first book. At the end, whenCorelli basically gives David a kid version of Cristina (who he... stole from some family? made in his magic lab? this is not explained and it's weird) to I guess raise and then marry (really, really gross), it's creepy and another example of women being mistreated or treated as props in this series.
There were a lot more fantasy/magic-seeming elements in this book compared to The Shadow of the Wind. It also felt a little darker and creepier. The mystery was intriguing enough, but there were several things I didn't understand - like Andreas Corelli's motivations. The whole plot felt a bit chaotic. I'm going to read the third one because allegedly it ties the first two books together and maybe it'll help something make sense, but I'm not looking forward to it.
While the events are mostly unrelated to the first book (except for the Sempere bookstore), there were a lot of elements that felt recycled - the young man who's poor (and a virgin, which is very important for some reason) but has rich benefactor friends; falls in love with a gorgeous young woman mostly from afar; doesn't have a mother; and gets sucked into a big mystery. Also, it started off with a shrewish woman boardinghouse owner and boardinghouse residents who try to watch the neighbor woman have sex through the window, so that’s... not a big improvement on depictions of women from the first book. At the end, when
There were a lot more fantasy/magic-seeming elements in this book compared to The Shadow of the Wind. It also felt a little darker and creepier. The mystery was intriguing enough, but there were several things I didn't understand - like Andreas Corelli's motivations. The whole plot felt a bit chaotic. I'm going to read the third one because allegedly it ties the first two books together and maybe it'll help something make sense, but I'm not looking forward to it.