Pages:
202
Original
date of publication: 1993
My
edition: 2010 (Phoenix)
Why
I decided to read:
How
I acquired my copy: Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, September 2011
Carlos
Ruiz Zafon is best known in the US for his bestselling adult novels, The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel’s Game. The Prince of Mist is a young adult novel,
published before his adult novels. The novel is the story of Max Carver, a
13-year-old boy who’s watchmaker father moves his family from an unnamed city
to an unnamed seaside town. Once there, Max discovers a garden with strange
statues and his sisters begin having unexplainable visions.
It’s
definitely a first novel, and even though I kept the fact that this is a YA
novel in the back of my mind as I was reading, I didn’t enjoy this book as much
as I wanted to. The characters are pretty one-dimensional; none of them really
grow in any way. Max seemed way too mature and intuitive for a 13-yer-old (even
for a novel of this type), and there were some plot elements and coincidences
that didn’t make a lot of sense to me—the first of which is that the eponymous
Prince of Mist chooses to make his appearances as… a clown?
The
book takes place in 1943, but it might as well have taken place in 1993, the
year the book was published, because there’s very little to no historical
detail. The theme of the passage of time is interesting, and I wish the author
had explored that more instead of trying to create cheap, gimmicky suspense. I
wish that Zafon had fleshed out his characters more, too, because there was a
lot of promise here in the idea for the book. Zafon’s writing style is
definitely not developed with this book; luckily, his adult novels are much,
much better.
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