Take a photo of a barcode or cover
raelovestoread 's review for:
The Midnight Palace
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
*SPOILERS* although to be fair... I don't suggest you bother reading it.
As an admirer of The Shadow of the Wind, I bought pretty much everything Zafon has ever written. Unfortunately, owing to the popularity of his cemetery of forgotten books series, they republished a load of his early YA work with misleadingly stunning packaging.
At first I thought that there must be a translation problem because the writing is so unforgivably explanatory and the dialogue so bad.
Quite frankly, it reads like it's been written by a teenager. The darkness shrouds and blankets things, the stars form a canopy, the snow forms a mantle, the sun.... You get the picture. I don't mind a bit of clichéd weather-describing, but this takes the biscuit.
I was going to give it an extra star for having some atmosphere... But the plot made no bloomin' sense.
In the dramatic climax, the Big Bad starts what seems to be a sinister game of Deal or No Deal.
Oh and the fire monster/ demon /baddie... that's been on fire for 40% of his screentime? That melds himself with the engine of a firey train and storms about in a raging storm of FIRE VENGEANCE... how do you think he is finally defeated? ......... well the protagonist lights a match and.........
Also, it's supposed to be Ian that's narrating, but Ian is only present for a minority of the time and seems to be omniscient.
The dialogue is dodgy.
No character reacts in any kind of realistic way to any situation they meet. They do sometimes explain to the reader in dialogue WHY they aren't behaving in a way befitting of any human being, but I didn't find that helped...
The setting is - as always in Zafon novels - the best bit, the mesmerising misty palaces of Calcutta are luscious. Bringing a mystical setting to life is one of his fortés and in this early work you can see him developing this skill.
Sadly, though, I found the overall effect to be rather pants.
As an admirer of The Shadow of the Wind, I bought pretty much everything Zafon has ever written. Unfortunately, owing to the popularity of his cemetery of forgotten books series, they republished a load of his early YA work with misleadingly stunning packaging.
At first I thought that there must be a translation problem because the writing is so unforgivably explanatory and the dialogue so bad.
Quite frankly, it reads like it's been written by a teenager. The darkness shrouds and blankets things, the stars form a canopy, the snow forms a mantle, the sun.... You get the picture. I don't mind a bit of clichéd weather-describing, but this takes the biscuit.
I was going to give it an extra star for having some atmosphere... But the plot made no bloomin' sense.
In the dramatic climax, the Big Bad starts what seems to be a sinister game of Deal or No Deal.
Oh and the fire monster/ demon /baddie... that's been on fire for 40% of his screentime? That melds himself with the engine of a firey train and storms about in a raging storm of FIRE VENGEANCE... how do you think he is finally defeated? ......... well the protagonist lights a match and.........
Also, it's supposed to be Ian that's narrating, but Ian is only present for a minority of the time and seems to be omniscient.
The dialogue is dodgy.
No character reacts in any kind of realistic way to any situation they meet. They do sometimes explain to the reader in dialogue WHY they aren't behaving in a way befitting of any human being, but I didn't find that helped...
The setting is - as always in Zafon novels - the best bit, the mesmerising misty palaces of Calcutta are luscious. Bringing a mystical setting to life is one of his fortés and in this early work you can see him developing this skill.
Sadly, though, I found the overall effect to be rather pants.