I received a copy of Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s “The Angel’s Game” via the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, and while I have received many outstanding books through the program, it’s been some time since I was so excited to be chosen. Zafon’s “Shadow of the Wind” was embraced by book-lovers because of the centrality of books to the narrative, and was a highly regarded worldwide bestseller in 2001.

David Martin is an aspiring young writer, laboring under a newspaper editor who

subscribes to the theory that the liberal use of adverbs and adjectives was the mark of a pervert or someone with a vitamin deficiency.

Most of the characters in “The Angel’s Game”, small and large, are drawn with similar uniqueness. Like many young artists in novels, David has a rich patron, Pedro Vidal. Vidal gets David fired from his newspaper job in order to push him into a writing career, helps him get a writing contract, and with the proceeds David acquires a gothic nightmare of a house, that’s been unoccupied for 20 years after some kind of terrible event took place.

The study was at the top of a tall tower, a peculiar structure at the heart of which was a spiral staircase that led off the main corridor, while its outside walls bore the traces of as many generations as the city could remember. There it stood, like a watchtower suspended over the roof of the Ribera quarter, crowned by a narrow dome of metal and tinted glass that served as a lantern, and topped by a weather vane in the shape of a dragon.

Writing under a pen name, David produces “City of the Damned”, a fantastical, gothic tale told in serial installments. At the same time, again anonymously, he works with Christina Sangier to ghostwrite (without Vidal’s knowledge) the novel Vidal is drunkenly dictating to Christina. David is smitten with Christina but she rebuffs him. “City of the Damned” draws the attention of the mysterious French publisher Corelli, who has more than a whiff of the supernatural to him. Corelli enlists David to produce yet a third book, one that will help Corelli create a religion, no less. Working with his newly acquired teenage assistant Isabella, David begins to produce the novel Corelli has paid him an extravagant amount to produce. A series of events shatters David’s life, and at the same time makes him more and more apprehensive about Corelli and the uses to which his book will be put.

Spanish gothic in tone and labyrinthine in plot, “The Angel’s Game” is a compelling read. The characters are all wonderfully quirky or mysterious or both. Occasionally the book’s tone or events veer into the territory of the romance novel, but these moments of lightness or predictability are quickly eradicated by darker forces or events. “The Angel’s Game” is no sequel to “The Shadow of the Wind” – this is a much darker, pessimistic work. The wonderful Cemetery of Forgotten Books, which was first introduced in “Shadow of the Wind”, does make an appearance or two in “The Angel’s Game”, but that role is not central.

Apart from the fantastical elements of the book, The Angel’s Game sometimes evokes the often courtly tone and style of one of Spain’s other great novelists, Arturo Perez-Reverte, and compares favorably with his work. Readers who enjoy Perez-Reverte should enjoy “The Angel’s Game”. While I can’t comment on the fidelity of the translation from the original Spanish, the prose of “The Angel’s Game” is of very high quality and one has no sense whatsoever of reading a translation. Interestingly, the translator of “The Angel’s Game”, as well as “Shadow of the Wind”, is Lucia Graves, the daughter of Robert Graves, the famous poet and author.

The Angel’s Game is a strong novel and stands quite well alone from “Shadow of the Wind”, yet those who loved Shadow of the Wind will enjoy The Angel’s Game. It’s darker in tone, and flags just a bit towards the end, but is well worth the read.

Was lucky enough to win an Early Reviewers copy of Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s new novel, The Angel’s Game. Zafon is the author of the widely admired novel, The Shadow of the Wind, in which a young boy acquires a book from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and has the rest of his life shaped by that event. I just received the Angel’s Game and consumed the first 100 pages last night. Very promising start….

I received a complementary copy of Gladiatrix, by Russell Whitfield, through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program (and a wonderful program it is!). Being a huge fan of Mary Renault, Steven Pressfield (ok he mostly does Greece), Wallace Breem, and of course, the movie Gladiator, I was eagerly anticipating this book. Gladiatrix is the story of Lysandra, the female gladiator. Not a lot of mystery about what this book is going to be about!

First off, let’s get it out of the way: the title. Gladiatrix. With a name like that, you expect some titillation, and some lesbianism – if that’s what you’re looking for, you will not be disappointed. Gladiatrices regularly seem to fight in the nude, and the sex scenes are pretty graphic. The subject matter seems to inspire lurid treatment – for example, witness Roger Corman’s Gladiatrix movie with Pam Grier, or the Discovery Channel Documentary on the Gladiatrix finds in London (less salacious). Between the title, the premise, and the cover art, I think the book will sell heavily, and although there have been other gladiatrix movies, I’d expect another one. But I digress.

The early stages of the book heavily echo the themes of the movie Gladiator – someone from the upper echelons of society, driven by circumstance into the arena – personal misfortune, gladiator school, rising through the ranks because of innate quality. It is heavily derivative from Gladiator, and in the early going I found myself annoyed that it felt so clearly imitative. I got over it before too long – at some level, it is truth in advertising: this book is Gladiator with a female protagonist. I was disappointed early on that some scenes didn’t happen “on camera”: Lysandra is enslaved through a shipwreck and ensuing events – yet the shipwreck and those events are not really rendered – they would have made nice scenes, and a good counterpoint to the constant martial circumstances that follow. I periodically wondered how historically accurate the book was (of course, there were female gladiatrices) – the references to other historical personages seem accurate insofar as I can tell (but I’m no expert here). I don’t know whether Spartan princesses existed, or whether they received battle training, but I was willing to suspend my disbelief on that point. But the historical side of things doesn’t get much play – this isn’t historical fiction ala Saylor or Pressfield. The book at times feels more like a romance novel, oddly enough – due to the interpersonal issues and personal conflicts that drive the novel forward. The dialog is at times stilted, sometimes the prose feels awkward. I believe it’s a first novel and it periodically feels like one. Lysandra comes off as an insufferable teenager (which in fact she is). But after a few hundred pages, I wanted to say to the author, “OK, I get it – she’s arrogant – you don’t have to beat me over the head with it”. I wanted to see more personal development out Lysandra, but perhaps that is to wait for another installment. The book is not explicitly part of a series, but the deus ex machina ending leads me to conclude more is forthcoming.

In the end, I enjoyed the book, and finished it quickly, but I am left wondering who the intended audience is. This is no Renault or Pressfield novel, peering deep into the human condition to find the things that ennoble us. And I don’t believe it’s a juvenile book – the tone feels wrong and the sex is a bit graphic for that. The fights are good and the swordplay frequent. Perhaps it’s just good old fashioned entertainment – just like the Arena was, thousands of years ago.

I recently received an advanced reader’s copy of The White Mary by Kira Salak to review from the publisher, Henry Holt. I was excited to learn of the novel, as I was an avid fan of Salak’s wonderful non-fictional narrative of her kayaking tour to Timbuktu, “The Cruelest Journey”.

Salak is a unique phenomenon and a wild spirit – traveling alone as a woman to places most men would be afraid to go in a group. Her non-fiction travel works capture the fear, wonder, and strangeness of traveling alone, a sort of female incarnation of Paul Theroux. I was looking forward to her first fictional work (although one wonders just how fictional it is, exactly). I was not disappointed.

The White Mary tells the tale of Marika Vecera, a journalist/war correspondent. The early parts of novel intertwine her experiences in Zaire reporting on genocide with a somewhat mysterious journey through the jungles of Papua New Guinea. We eventually learn that Marika is chasing the ghost of Robert Lewis, a journalist she worships and who inspired her career. She’s also chasing some ghosts of her own; her time in Zaire has scarred her deeply. The White Mary is in fact an extraordinarily powerful portrait of a person who has “seen too much”. Marika’s near-death experience in the Congo has left her emotionally numb, and walled off from the care of those closest to her. Salak’s rendering of Marika’s psychological problems is done in pitch-perfect detail. The novel is sometimes adult, brutal and violent, and not for early teens or the faint of heart.

Just as folk musicians perform songs in pairs, it’s sometimes interesting to read & review books in pairs. At the same time as I was reading The White Mary, I was also consuming “The Painter of Battles” by the renowned author Arturo Perez-Reverte (one of my favorite authors). The Painter of Battles covers very similar territory in some respects –
the protagonist there has “seen too much” as a war photographer and has given way to despair, retiring to paint a battle that spans all historical battles, and to avoid all human interaction (interestingly one of the key characters in The White Mary is a war photographer). Where the Painter of Battles is deeply philosophical and contemplative, the White Mary is visceral; the Painter of Battles is carefully drawn, exquisitely written and intriguing to read. And yet, three weeks later, the Painter of Battles is not finished, and The White Mary yielded in two sittings. It’s that compelling; I had to finish it. Perez-Reverte’s prose is smoother and more ornate, even in translation (or perhaps because of it), whereas Salak’s prose is more muscular and direct. The writing in The White Mary is occasionally awkward but still compares favorably with that of such a distinguished author as Perez-Reverte.

Salak’s Marika is an extraordinarily well-drawn character; I never doubted her reality for a moment. And Salak regularly captures one of the key aspects of travel – the shock of experiencing fundamentally different cultural assumptions. Marika for example, is sent to the “women’s hut” when she is menstruating, where she rages at the artificial and (to her, of course) ludicrous belief system that requires it. Marika’s progress through something like post-traumatic stress disorder is carefully and believably painted, and you root for her to come back even as she spirals downward in self-destructive behavior.

In short, the White Mary is a powerful and gripping first novel, a cautionary tale full of danger, travel, and adventure, and at the same time gives deep insight into the human condition.

(If you’d like to explore the geography of The White Mary, I’ve plotted many of the locations mentioned in my Books/Google Maps mashup, CodexMap.

The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, created a minor sensation in the literary world when it went out for bid in 2007. Reportedly, early bids of $1 million were declined. Doubleday eventually came out the winner. Responding to a banner ad from Publisher’s Lunch, I was fortunate enough to receive an Advance Readers Copy, prior to the book’s August 5, 2008 release.

The narrator of The Gargoyle (it seems that he’s consciously never named by the author) had a troubled childhood, and has grown into full-bore bad guy: Pornographer, Drug Addict, and, as the story opens, a Very Impaired Driver on a mountain road. Mysteriously, a volley of burning arrows flies across the road and in front of the car (are they real? hallucinated? Flying through a warp in the space-time continuum?). One too many over-reactions on the Narrator’s part, and he and his car are plunging down the mountainside, toward a crash and an inferno.

By the top of page 3, the narrator is on fire.

The opening of the Gargoyle is like a stiff Scotch, accidentally swallowed down the wrong pipe. It burns going down (you’ll pardon the metaphor), with fumes all up your nose, and you’ll want to take a deep breath. And like a great scotch, once the first drink settles, you’ll want more:

I imagine, dear reader, that you’ve had some experience with heat. Perhaps you’ve tipped a boiling kettle at the wrong angle and the steam crept up your sleeve….I want you to imagine something new…Imagine turning on one of the elements of your stove – let’s say it’s the electric kind with the black coils on top. Don’t put a pot of water on the element because the water only absorbs the heat….a slight violet tinge will appear, nestled there in the black rings, and then the element assumes some reddish-purple tones, like unripe blackberries. It moves towards orange, and finally – finally! – an intense glowing red. Kind of beautiful, isn’t it? Now lower your head so that your eyes are even with the top of the old stove and you can peer through the shimmering waves rising up…..I want you to trace the fingertips of your left hand gently across your right palm, noting the way your skin registers even the lightest touch. If some else were doing it, you might even be turned on. Now, slam that sensitive, responsive hand directly onto the glowing element.

And hold it there. Hold it there as the element scorches Dante’s nine rings right into your palm, allowing you to grasp Hell in your hand forever. Let the heat engrave the skin, the muscles, the tendons; let it smolder down to the bone. Wait for the burn to embed itself so far into you that you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to let go of that coil. It won’t be long until the stench of your own burning flesh wafts up, grabbing your nose hairs and refusing to let go, and you smell your body burn….I want you to do one more thing….lean down, turn your head to one side, and slap your check against that same element. I’ll let you choose which side of your face…Now you might have some idea of what it was like for me to be pinned inside that car…

Clearly Davidson has made a deep study of burns and their treatment. On occasion his hypnotic renderings of fire make you wonder if he played with matches too much as a child. Davidson gives all the gory details (literally) of burn treatment, the methods, rationales, and dangers. We follow the Narrator into the hospital and follow his recovery, where he is eventually discovered by Marianne Engle, who appears to be a somewhat deranged artist that likes to sculpt in the nude. Marianne apparently knows our Narrator from the Middle Ages (she apparently has a very long lifespan which our Narrator does not). Marianne attends to our Narrator during his recovery, and begins a Scheherazade-like series of tales involving….well, you’ll need to read the book for those. Along the way, the Narrator also acquires a metaphorical (or is it?) Snake: a voice of self doubt and the personification of Morphine addiction.

The series of tales start in the Middle Ages in Germany, and wend their way into other times and locations, including the aforementioned Hell of Dante. The two-track structure of the novel, alternating between modern times and the Middle Ages, is often reminiscent of Crichton’s Timeline. Yet Crichton’s time-travel has a meticulous and well-articulated (if speculative) mechanism for this time duality. I never felt a clear grasp of the intended mechanism in the Gargoyle, and as a result had some trouble achieving Coleridge’s state of “willing suspension of disbelief” required for fantasy to really work to the fullest extent.

The “Tales of a Thousand and One Nights” structure generally works well and is quite entertaining. This is a first novel, and a fine one – but in places the book feels forced, and I found some of the transitions from one tale to the next to be artificial and abrupt. And some of the stories seem a bit unmotivated and arbitrary. In particular, the Viking interlude featuring Sigurðr, while thoroughly enjoyable, in the end doesn’t seem to really take the book anywhere. Nonetheless the prose is crisp throughout – the occasional awkwardness comes more from the structure of the story than from the language, which is often quite powerful. As the stories progress, I often found myself trying to figure out who was re-incarnated, and who was not? But perhaps that is part of the experience….

The primary criticism of the novel that I have is that the transformation of the Narrator from Bad Guy into what he becomes seems to happen off-camera, as it were – I did not feel as though I was really participating in the internal dialog, the wrenching psychological changes that occur to the Narrator, until near the end of the book.

Those criticisms aside, the book was wonderful fun. Marianne is rendered larger than life – wild hair, flashing green eyes, carving grotesques and sleeping on them in the nude. The Snake is an ever-present voice, whispering poison into the Narrator’s ear (or mind) – a wonderful manifestation of the self doubt we all feel at times. The novel is sprinkled throughout with wonderful historical asides and filled with arcane Medieval history – the history of German translations of Dante, the parallels between Dante’s cosmography and the views and trials of Galileo, and the fundamental strangeness of Medieval German Christian Mysticism via the mortifications of the flesh and self-flagellation. And of course, Gargoyles, and how they are different from Grotesques (you probably have them mixed up, you know – if it doesn’t channel water, it’s not a Gargoyle, it’s a Grotesque). It’s an entertaining read. It has a few rough edges, but read it – I don’t think you’ll regret it.