The Shadow of the Wind is one of my all-time favorite books.
The Angel's Game, while initially intriguing, annoyed me with it's needless complexity and completely ambiguous ending.
However, The Prisoner of Heaven helped to make me slightly less angry with The Angel's Game because it filled in some (but not nearly enough) of that story's missing pieces. While it does help to explain why that book comes across as a disjointed, dream-like, schizophrenic mess, it still doesn't allow me to forgive it completely.
In contrast, I liked this book a lot. It was short for Zafon (only about 200 pages) but it was still good. It starts just after The Shadow of the Wind ends, yet it flashes back to just after The Angel's Game ends. In short, it forms a very nice bridge piece that connects the two story arcs. Zafon still manages to infuse the story with his haunting magical realism, but it wasn't nearly as over the top as the Angel's Game, and for that I was grateful.
I was trying to figure out the ideal order in which to read this series, but the author's note was correct: in this unique situation, you can pretty much start anywhere you want. There is so much overlap that you really can't go wrong no matter where you begin. And that is the most important thing of all when it comes to this series: simply begin. You will not regret it.
The Angel's Game, while initially intriguing, annoyed me with it's needless complexity and completely ambiguous ending.
However, The Prisoner of Heaven helped to make me slightly less angry with The Angel's Game because it filled in some (but not nearly enough) of that story's missing pieces. While it does help to explain why that book comes across as a disjointed, dream-like, schizophrenic mess, it still doesn't allow me to forgive it completely.
In contrast, I liked this book a lot. It was short for Zafon (only about 200 pages) but it was still good. It starts just after The Shadow of the Wind ends, yet it flashes back to just after The Angel's Game ends. In short, it forms a very nice bridge piece that connects the two story arcs. Zafon still manages to infuse the story with his haunting magical realism, but it wasn't nearly as over the top as the Angel's Game, and for that I was grateful.
I was trying to figure out the ideal order in which to read this series, but the author's note was correct: in this unique situation, you can pretty much start anywhere you want. There is so much overlap that you really can't go wrong no matter where you begin. And that is the most important thing of all when it comes to this series: simply begin. You will not regret it.
