"The Midnight Palace" Book Review

The Midnight Palace by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"In the heart of Calcutta lurks a dark mystery. . . .

"Set in Calcutta in the 1930s, The Midnight Palace begins on a dark night when an English lieutenant fights to save newborn twins Ben and Sheere from an unthinkable threat. Despite monsoon-force rains and terrible danger lurking around every street corner, the young lieutenant manages to get them to safety, but not without losing his own life. . . .

"Years later, on the eve of Ben and Sheere’s sixteenth birthday, the mysterious threat reenters their lives. This time, it may be impossible to escape. With the help of their brave friends, the twins will have to take a stand against the terror that watches them in the shadows of the night—and face the most frightening creature in the history of the City of Palaces."

This was good, but "The Prince of Mist" was better as far as Mr. Carlos Ruiz Zafon's young adult fiction is concerned.

*SPOILERS* Read at your own discretion.

I feel as if the characters had different traits at each end of the book. Take for instance, Ian: in the beginning of the story he's regarded as a scared and wimpy person, the last person to take a risk "and therefore more likely to survive". But by the end of the book, he's the first to try to suck snake venom out of someone's arm, the one the group of friends (called the Chowdar Society) calls upon to talk to Ben, and the one who is trying to become a doctor, which is not for the weak of heart or stomach. And then the Aryami Bose character was the most cowardly of all. She's mentioned at the beginning of the book as this powerful sorcerous in the heart of the Black City part of Calcutta, but when it came time to prove her worth against this monster, she runs, leaving one twin all by himself at an orphanage.

Another problem I had, was when Jawahal wants to take over his own daughter's body to keep existing. "Your lips will be my lips." Ewwww. That whole part was very incestuous. And then in the beginning of the book, Ben is flirting with Sheere. I realize he didn't know that they were twins, but still kind of disturbing on the part of the author. About as bad as George Lucas, come to think of it.

I feel like some parts could have been explained better. Like the part about how Jawahal couldn't kill Ben outright and had to trick him into doing it. And why Jawahal was so powerful. He was like an insane ghost that attached itself to a machine???

Very confused. But I know this one is for kids. I still enjoyed it, just not as fond of it as his other work. Looking forward to more "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" stories and "The Watcher in the Shadows" which comes out in Spring 2013. It looks good!


View all my reviews

"The Prisoner of Heaven" Book Review

The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Once again, internationally acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author Carlos Ruiz Zafón creates a rich, labyrinthine tale of love, literature, passion, and revenge, set in a dark, gothic Barcelona, in which the heroes of 'The Shadow of the Wind' and 'The Angel's Game' must contend with a nemesis that threatens to destroy them.

"Barcelona,1957. It is Christmas, and Daniel Sempere and his wife Bea have much to celebrate. They have a beautiful new baby son named Julian, and their close friend Fermín Romero de Torres is about to be wed. But their joy is eclipsed when a mysterious stranger visits the Sempere bookshop and threatens to divulge a terrible secret that has been buried for two decades in the city's dark past. His appearance plunges Fermín and Daniel into a dangerous adventure that will take them back to the 1940's and the dark early days of Franco's dictatorship. The terrifying events of that time launch them on a journey fraught with jealousy, suspicion, vengeance, and lies, a search for the truth that will put into peril everything they love and ultimately transform their lives.

"Full of intrigue and emotion, 'The Prisoner of Heaven' is a majestic novel in which the threads of 'The Shadow of the Wind' and 'The Angel's Game' converge under the spell of literature and bring us toward the enigma of the mystery hidden at the heart of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a collection of lost treasures known only to its few initiates and the very core of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's enchanting fictional world.

“Gabriel GarcÍa Marquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges for a sprawling magic show." —New York Times Book Review on 'The Shadow of the Wind'."

Although I haven't mentioned him before on this blog, I love, love, love Carlos Ruiz Zafon's work! I think he is absolutely brilliant and have loved him since I spotted "The Prince of Mist" and "The Shadow of the Wind".

Some of the credit for my instant attraction to his work has to be attributed to the designers of the book covers: Chin-Yee Lai for "The Angel's Game", Robin Bilardello for "The Prisoner of Heaven", and, in particular, Tal Goretsky for "The Shadow of the Wind". I absolutely loved that cover, it so well drawn and I've always been intrigued by a book inside of a book resembled on the cover of a book, and I thought this time it had been very cleverly and beautifully rendered. And the compliment from Stephen King helped as well.

I love his descriptions of a past Barcelona in its unapologetic prime, I love his witty characters and dialogue, and I love the mystique he puts in everything. I also like his characters mentioning of other books, usually the classics, while describing their fraught lives. He's one of my favorite authors of all time. So, imagine my joy when I found this new book of his at the bookstore, I knew (hoped?) he was going to write more, but I had no idea something had come out recently.

As the summary suggests, this book lays out the history of Fermín Romero de Torres, one of the beloved characters from the series. New villains appear in the form of Mauricio Valls, a greedy, sadistic character who runs a war prisoners jail in the mountains above Barcelona. His heinous crimes come too close to home for Daniel Sempere's family and even threatens to ruin Fermín's one chance at happiness. Other characters from the previous two books also show up, either as actual participants in the new part of the saga, or they are tantalizingly mentioned by the two main characters.

I enjoyed this book as well as the other two ("The Angel's Game" and "The Shadow of the Wind") and I thought this could be a good ending for the series, speaking from a literary standpoint, of course, but I hope there is more! I just love everything too much to let it go. I want to know how everything ends for these people. What happened to Daniel Martin and Julian Carax? It can't end with such a cliff-hanger! Oh, Zafon, how you tease!


View all my reviews