Lee Goldberg's Reviews > The Angel's Game
The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2)
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The book starts out so well, rich in a character, humor, and a powerful sense of place. It captivated me from the first few pages. I couldn't wait to keep reading. I rewarded myself with it each night. I felt I was reading a truly great book, one I was certain would become a beloved favorite of mine.
I was so in love, that I was willing to overlook a nagging flaw -- in a story where language and the craft of writing mean so much, where the writer himself aims a spotlight on authorial laziness ("Don Basilo was a forbidden-looking man with a bushy moustache who did not suffer fools and who subscribed to the theory that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a pervert or someone with a vitamin deficiency"), I was astonished by the repeated reliance on cliche phrase. For example:
"In this neck of the woods, one doesn't have to run very fast."
"The editorial board had opted to take the bull by the horns..."
"technically, it was my father who paid, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth"
"my father came back and found me alive and kicking..."
It was especially bewildering since the author is capable of such amazing, vivid, and fresh prose. How could he possibly let a cliche like "he let the cat out of the bag" get past the rough draft?
Since the book is a translation, I will give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the translator's fault and not his (one need only look at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for an example of that).
But the cliches would be a minor annoyance if the rest of the book matched the brilliance of the first half. Unfortunately, the book quickly devolves into relentlessly dull exposition, delivered by one-note characters with absolutely no motivation or reason to deliver the speeches to our hero besides the author's need to relay the information.
Worse, the plot, such as it was, totally collapses into an unintelligble, incoherent mess that isn't satisfying or entertaining. Nothing that was "planted" in the first half pays off in the second. For me, the book was a crushing disappointment.
I was so in love, that I was willing to overlook a nagging flaw -- in a story where language and the craft of writing mean so much, where the writer himself aims a spotlight on authorial laziness ("Don Basilo was a forbidden-looking man with a bushy moustache who did not suffer fools and who subscribed to the theory that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a pervert or someone with a vitamin deficiency"), I was astonished by the repeated reliance on cliche phrase. For example:
"In this neck of the woods, one doesn't have to run very fast."
"The editorial board had opted to take the bull by the horns..."
"technically, it was my father who paid, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth"
"my father came back and found me alive and kicking..."
It was especially bewildering since the author is capable of such amazing, vivid, and fresh prose. How could he possibly let a cliche like "he let the cat out of the bag" get past the rough draft?
Since the book is a translation, I will give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the translator's fault and not his (one need only look at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for an example of that).
But the cliches would be a minor annoyance if the rest of the book matched the brilliance of the first half. Unfortunately, the book quickly devolves into relentlessly dull exposition, delivered by one-note characters with absolutely no motivation or reason to deliver the speeches to our hero besides the author's need to relay the information.
Worse, the plot, such as it was, totally collapses into an unintelligble, incoherent mess that isn't satisfying or entertaining. Nothing that was "planted" in the first half pays off in the second. For me, the book was a crushing disappointment.
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Finished Reading
April 18, 2010
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Rachel
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Oct 08, 2010 08:25PM
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I think Zafon should be commended for tricking us into thinking that this was Shadow Part 2, when in reality his goal was a completely different concept for a novel all together. If that's disappointing to you, so be it. But I for one feel disappointed when the second installment of a series is merely a rehashing of the first. When a storyline is tied up as well as was the ending of Shadow, I have little appetite for a straight sequel. I'd much rather see a new theme under a similar, broad conceptual umbrella. That's where the Dragon Tattoo series or the film series the Matrix completely failed as works of artful storytelling. The first episodes were great; the follow ups, not so much. The sequels were trying to be like the first which is impossible given where they started, so they stretched and took license and ended up as muddy messes. Zafon wisely avoided that trap by doing something completely different.
The only things Shadow and Angel have in common are a general mystery-detective theme, a gothic conception of Barcelona, the Semperes, and the Cemetary. Strip away those elements, and they're totally unrelated works. They're the literary equivalent of fifth cousins. Say what you will about the technical execution, but I think the thought process driving this book was absolutely ingenious.
Same here! The translator has been criticized for bastardizing all of Zafon's books, I'm not sure why they have kept the same one!
I just finished the book and was quite disappointed by the "no-solution" end as well ... I'm very happy I read your comment here, that puts the book into a very new and interesting perspective I have to admit I haven't noticed. Many thanks for this! :)
I just wish I could read Spanish cos I'm sure the original are super.
Carlos LuiZ Zafon will have a prominent place in my home library.
That being said, and though I haven´t read him in spanish (my mother language), I find Carlos Ruiz Zafón an accomplished and resourceful storyteller with a vast command of language and must say I´m rather satisfied with the english translation (again, not my mother language). Furthermore, in Ruiz Zafón I see not only the fine writer but quite the philosopher, from whose work a myriad of philosophical droplets peep out frequently, and in this line of thought in this novel find particularly interesting his statement of what religion is and how one is forged.
Something I found more tan a bit curious is how different the Sempere family is from that in The Shadow of the Wind, where Daniel grew up, married Beatriz “Bea” Aguilar and had a son named Julián… but that is quite literally, another story.
Just an opinión…
Luis Viñals
That's very true and possible