Oh. Um. Ah.
I was pretty disappointed by this book. Maybe it’s because
“The Shadow of the Wind” is amazing and all that, but this just felt like a
letdown to me.
I didn’t even realize how much of a prequel it was until I
read online that Sampere the son from “An Angel’s Game” is Sempere the father
of “The Shadow of the Wind”. Before that I thought that Zafon had completely
messed up who married who and all that. But really, he could have made it
clearer.
It’s just, the main character isn’t nearly as likeable as
Daniel is in “The Shadow of the Wind”. Same goes for the rest of the
characters, no one has the intense personality of Fermin. In fact, characters
drop like flies throughout the novel until we’re left with a narrator who seems
to be increasingly more unreliable as time goes on.
As a result I didn’t really give a fuck about him and his
little struggles. He could have seen this coming really.
A nice touch is the idea that books contain part of our
souls, and reflect the author. David, the narrator, first literally sells his
soul to the devil (yeah Corelli=the devil with all his deals and such) and then
writes a book about religion with a warrior Messiah coming (pretty Marxist)
which indicates that his soul is probably in hell somewhere. And since the book
has his soul he gives it to the devil as a method of payment. Then at the end
all of the “Lux Aeterna” books are there, showing just how many people sold
themselves to Corelli.
The plot is again hella complicated, but does get simpler as
characters die (haha).
And then there’s all of these loose ends that are never tied
up, either for artistic purposes or otherwise. Who is in Mascala’s grave? How
did Corelli get Cristina (when she was like 9 no less)? How was David wearing
the angel brooch the entire time? Literally what did I just read?
So yeah, this isn’t as good, but I guess it’s an interesting
read if you like companion books set similarly and all that. I guess I’ll
attempt the next one in the trilogy, we’ll see how that goes.
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