Book Review: The Angel's Game

I attempted Zafon's second book, The Angel's Game last week. While I took close to a month to finish The Shadow of the Wind (see review below), also by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, having read TSOW somehow sped up my reading speed on the Angel's Game. Now on to the review.

Yes, I read this. In three days. 

I preferred TSOW, that was safe enough to say. Simply because I didn't feel cheated by TSOW. With the Angel's Game, I am tempted to say that Zafon did not try hard enough. 

But first... a synopsis (partial spoilers included)

David Martin, the protagonist, was given a chance to write a short story when the editor at the newspaper he was working for could not find anyone to replace a spot in the paper at the very last minute. Martin wrote with all his heart, established a storyline that left his readers wanting more and became a regular at the column until colleagues started succumbing to the evils of envy and start ocstracising him. He was subsequently fired and commissioned to write installments of City of the Damned for two blood-sucking publishers that milked him for all he had, but not before he was able to secure a mansion worthy of mention in the gothic series he created. 

Halfway through the writing process, Cristina, a girl he developed a crush on seeks his help and pointed out that he is better than the dark novels he is writing. He sets out to prove her right, and impress her, by refusing to continue writing what his contract required him to... and started writing what his heart tells him to. 

So far so good...

After a barrage of cruel twists of fate swarm Martin's life, he is approached by a gentleman named Andreas Corelli to write a religious-based book ala the Bible. That's when things begin to get weird. 

And don't get me started on the ending because you're not going to like it.

MAJOR SPOILERS ahead (here's when I start bitching):

Note: Bitching is a harsh word by the way but at the moment, no other word will correctly and quietly surmise what I'm about to do. 

For pete's sake (whoever Pete is, I'm sorry), is the guy schizo or is the devil he was making a deal with killing everyone? Who the heck is this Marlasca fella and what does he have to do with Martin apart from having lived in the home Martin bought? What's up with Irene, Valera, the witch and Salvador? And that last scene? What? Bringing Cristina back in the form of a child is supposed to make Martin feel better? worse? confused?

Sigh...

I want answers! But only because TSOW was so freaking awesome and easily explainable. By the last one-third of the book, everything began to take shape, falling into place in this huge jigsaw puzzle years in the making, and everything was explainable by someone, some reason or some cause. There were solid answers and it wasn't explained away by supernatural means like how TAG was... which left me sorely disappointed.

My futile attempts at sanity

Here are some of my answers as to what may have happened to David Martin during the course of the TAG storyline:

1. Martin died somewhere along the way and this was just something he was going through in purgatory. 

Status of theory: LAME - because you can't really make a deal with the Devil and still be able to meet with people you love, develop relationships with people you like and try to endure people that you hate (deep down inside). If you can, that's called cheating.

2. Martin was a schizo and he is going through a coping mechanism which was what Corelli was in essence.

Status of theory: WORKABLE - because let's face it, the guy has a lousy life and oh, let me count the ways.

(a) Dude had to contend with living with an abusive father.

(b) Dude loses abusive father to a bunch of thugs.

(c) Dude receives only a gun and not enough bullets from his father (hint hint)

(d) Dude develops a crush on Cristina, the daughter of a chauffer. She isn't even that interesting.

(e) Dude loses Cristina to Vidal, the only guy who made most of his life worth living for through multiple acts of charity and under-the-table opportunities.

(f) Dude finds out that Vidal was also the cause that his father died.

(g) Dude also gets the news that the book he wrote for Vidal was getting awesome reviews and selling like hotcakes, without him getting any credit, and worst of all, his only attempt at impressing Cristina gets shelved quicker than he can say "unfair-much".

(h) Dude's mom is not much of a reader - throws the book he wrote away like a piece of trash and that was the last we read of her throughout the whole book.

(i) If you are still looking for more things Martin can be sad about in this list, then you really should just read the book... I'm too sad to list anything else.

(j) At this point, any sane person would one, kill himself or herself or two, go crazy. I'm guessing Martin took route no.2.

So he develops Corelli who gives him something to do... write another book with an imaginary reward, a huge sum of money. And whoever gets in the way, get bummed off, permanently. What he experiences (as he narrates them, unreliably) and what really happened (as heard by someone else who had conversation with him) splits at the fork on the road, multiple times throughout the whole book, ending with him needing to run and live in recluse on an island somewhere because regardless of whether or not he killed all those people, they will hang him for sure, if they catch him. He finds refuge in Corelli bringing him Cristina in the form of a child, with partial memories of her remembering what they had before she was coldly taken away from him under a layer of ice.  

3. Martin did take up the bargain to write for Corelli and somehow Corelli is doing all the dirty deeds.

Status of theory: WORKABLE with conditions - At the end of the book Corelli is basically telling Martin that he only took Cristina away from him and he was sorry and so Corelli brought her back to him. The action was to be interpreted also as a punishment he had for Martin because Martin renegade on him about the book he promised to write but did not finish... Martin would see Cristina grow up, grow old and die, leaving him all alone as he is cursed, damned to live an ageless life all on his own.

This also basically tells us that everything else was done by him, as pointed out by Grandes who says that the angel brooch has always been on Martin's lapel since the first day Grandes met Martin. 

But it does not explain what Diego Marlasca and Ricardo Salvador had to do with all of this. There must be a link between David Martin and Diego Marlasca apart from the same initials and the fact that they lived in the same house, but the link is not apparent to this reader. Maybe whoever it is that lives in that house gets commissioned to write by Corelli. Maybe Marlasca disguised himself as Salvador to hide from Corelli. Maybe Zafon should have just left out that back story and work on expanding Martin's life more - like his mother, why she left his poor father - or Isabella - maybe listen in on more of her conversations with the bookseller, Sempere's son (Daniel Sempere's father) because her conversations with Martin are brilliant - the thing I enjoyed most throughout the book.

On a light-hearted note, I loved how he described Sempere Snr and delivered the backstory about how Isabella came to be Daniel's mother and how Daniel's dad is such a good-looking but 'slow' klutz. He didn't write much about the Cemetery of the Forgotten Books but personally I think he did a pretty good job about it in TSOW. 

I just wished he did better with TAG. I wonder if I am asking too much. On to the next book, woo-hoo!