With this RSI inducing tome, the incomparable Zafón completes his Cemetery of Forgotten Books cycle, and believe me, he is not fucking around. Plunging us back among the cursed writers of Barcelona, presents an intense, intricate novel that leads us through years and horrors as Daniel Sempere tries to solve the mystery of his mother's murder, Fermín Romero de Torres tries to pay a long standing debt, and a vengeance is extracted for a terrible crime.
I will admit to being unfairly harsh on The Prisoner of Heaven in my initial review, but will not deny that The Labyrinth of the Spirits brought back all my breathless devotion. There is a poetic intensity to the prose - maintained once again by the wonderful translation of Lucia Graves - that leads to the almost worshipful quoting, of sheer loss of self in the glory of the prose. This is not to say The Labyrinth of the Spirits is merely an exercise in style - Zafón's grip on the horror, on atrocity, is perhaps fresher and more powerful than I have seen it before. He does not shy from brutality, but looks it direct in the eye and permits us to see how truly appalling mankind can be.
And, as I said before, he is not fucking around. Hitherto, the Cemetery of Forgotten Books has been generally political, perhaps even Political, as it engaged with the cost of war, the way class, power, and money twist our lives, but in Angel's Game and The Shadow of the Wind these were often lost in the genre expectations and dreamlike qualities of the tale. Yes, The Prisoner of Heaven was very direct in its criticisms of Franco's regime and those who enabled it, however it is not until The Labyrinth of the Spirits that Zafón brings the full lyrical power of his prose to communicate the genuine horrors of fascist authoritarianism. This is not a Labyrinth to enter lightly, nor one to leave you unchanged.
It has long been my theory that these novels present us with devils, with tortured lightbringers who are perhaps more sympathetic than the monstorous men surrounding them, but who left the side of the angels long ago. To the damned pair that are David Martín and Julián Carax, Zafón adds Alicia Gris - who fulfils her part with incredible power - but he also lets us see that there has been an angel present all along. Perhaps one who wears old newspapers inside his coat and who is unashamed in his lust for pneumatic stars of the screen, perhaps even one who fell as far and as hard as the devils ever did, but one who remains an angel nevertheless.
But before this turns in to one of my failed reviews, I suppose I must make the inevitable complaint: I didn't like the ending. I can see why the ending is as it is, can even appreciate the cleverness with which it is all done, may even feel more kindly about it when I've read the whole series as one (which I will when I've cleared my reading pile a little) but I didn't think it was necessary to tie everything together so neatly, draw it out so long, or answer all those questions.
On top of all that - I simply did not like it, and reserve the right to feel that way.
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