The Prince of Mist tells the story of Max and his family who move from the city to a sleepy seaside town in order to avoid the effects of the war.  Max and his elder sister Alicia soon make friends with Roland, a local boy who shows them around and takes them diving by the wreck of an old cargo ship.  However, though the town is quiet the Carver family house is full of mystery and has a tragic past.  The statues in the walled garden seem to move, a strange cat adopts the family and voices can be heard in the walls.  Then disaster strikes, causing Max and Alicia to be left alone in the house to face the enigmatic Prince of Mist.

One of the things that I remember about The Shadow of the Wind is how well Zafon conjures up atmosphere, and The Prince of Mist continues that; although it is a young adult book and a very swift read it is gripping and immersive.  The contrast between the quiet, unthreatening setting where Max cycles around on his own, buys sticky buns from the bakery and ‘gossip moved at the speed of boredom‘ (p. 140) and the chilling atmosphere which accompanies the main action of the story is cleverly achieved.  The supernatural elements seem even more eerie because of the stark way in which they stand out against the cheerful little town which Max’s father has specifically (and ironically) chosen as somewhere to keep his family safe.

Although this is the third of Zafon’s books to be translated into English, it was his first novel in Spanish, and it lacks some of the polish of The Shadow of the Wind (although this may partially be because of the different target audience).  There are several aspects of the novel which would benefit from a clearer, more defined explanation.  Amongst other things, I wanted to know why the statues in Max’s garden kept moving and what was the significance of that beyond general menace.  I enjoy a bit of supernatural ambiguity in novels like this, but in The Prince of Mist it felt less like deliberate concealment for dramatic effect and more like things which just weren’t explained.  Apparently this is the first book in a trilogy, so I can only hope that some of these things are expanded more fully in the later books.  Nonetheless, Zafon writes a compelling story and I shall be continuing to collect them as they are translated into English.

The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves.  Published by Phoenix, 2011, pp. 213.  Originally published in 2006.

Barcelona, 1945-just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness and doomed love. And before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.  (Goodreads Summary)

I read a great many books, but it’s rare that I find one that I enjoy quite as much as I did this one. It intrigued and fascinated me to the point where, although I guessed the end relatively early on, I was still devouring the book at a rate of knots in order to find out how exactly the author would get there. I look forward to reading more from this author.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  Published by Phoenix, 2005, pp. 510.  Originally published in Spanish in 2003.

N.B. This is an old review written in 2010 and posted on Goodreads and LibraryThing before I started keeping track of all the books I read here at Old English Rose Reads.  I’ve decided to keep copies here so that this remains a complete record of my reading since I started reviewing books for my own pleasure.