Prisoner of Heaven

Or Shadow of the Wind Part 3, or Cemetery of Forgotten Books vol III, or Angel’s Game Part 2. Whatever it is called, it is Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s third book in a gothic series relating Barcelona post-Spanish-Civil-War to a family struggling to maintain a bookstore, a real awesome cemetery of forgotten books (which is like a library of Holy Grail conditioned books banished from contemporary society for any number of reasons), and the Sempere family. Though the series started out with one of the best books of the last ten years, and I am not exaggerating to reinforce my point on the other two, the books that followed just didn’t seem to contain the same awesome crime-mystery-thick plotlines with great points on the wickedness of people keeping secrets, the twisted nature of war and its longterm affects, and the general magic with which Zafon writes. It was almost as if the second two were written by another person trying to cash in on the fame of the writer of the first one.

Anyway, this book deals a lot with the same family we were introduced to in the first book, only at a much later time. Daniel is all grown up now and is a father. Fermin is looking to get married to Bernarda and the bookstore is, predictably, struggling. Fermin’s wedding prompts the issue we were introduced to in the first book but didn’t worry too much about, his fake name. His lack of real identity. His true identity cannot be known because he changed it during the civil war and for all intents and purposes became this Fermin Romero de Torres.

 So he tells Daniel why he did it, and that story becomes the plot, or most of it, for this book. It covers his time in prison during the conflict (or shortly after the war, I am not really familiar with the history of Spain), and his time in a cell across from the guy who is the main character of the second book. Not only does this plot totally try to mindfuck what the reader thought was going on in the second book (if you haven’t read it yet, The Angel’s Game, don’t bother, as The Prisoner of Heaven suggests none of it happened that way anyway), but it also weaves its way into about a 100pg section recreating the prison scene of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with Mr. Ruiz Zafon, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of if not thee greatest book written in modern literature. But you can’t just take a scene from it (which, since it’s a 1,000 pg book, each scene is a novel or novella in itself) and use it as the plot for a modern day book. It just doesn’t work. It also doesn’t if you’re trying to tie into another book in your series but without really tying into it, just saying “that whole time you that this was happening…well that was happening.”

Aside from all my whining, it is a good book, just with a weak plot. Its greatest flaws are that Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote an absolutely mind-blowingly good novel in Book I of this series, The Shadow of the Wind, and each book since has disappointed fans of him and the series; and other flaws include the aforementioned Alexandre Dumas tribute gone wrong and a plot that just doesn’t amount to much. I meant the villains in the story meet unexpected ends but not in a way you’d dramatically, climactically hope for, especially after reading The Shadow of the Wind.

And apparently, Carlos is Espain's answer to Karl Pilkington

My ultimate review comes down to this: Read  the series thus far in reverse. And let me know, when you get to The Shadow of the Wind, if you liked it as much as me. Seems you will, as each book will build to that magic moment in literary history (it was good beyond description…every sentence was so well thought out and placed and written I couldn’t do it justice with a review here, honest!), until you reach the punch line or “ah-ha!” moment of it all. Just, someone, for the sake of literature and recommendations, please try it. So I can know if that’s how I should recommend these books to friends. Because I have unfortunately made a friend read The Shadow of the Wind not long after I read it and he still has not picked up a copy of the others. I could be ousted as a good source of recommendations if I tell him to continue the series…