Book Review: The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Posted on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 by PrettyLittleYAB“It’s wartime, and the Carver family decides to leave the capital where they live and move to a small coastal village where they’ve recently bought a home. But from the minute they cross the threshold, strange things begin to happen. In that mysterious house still lurks the spirit of Jacob, the previous owners’ son, who died by drowning.
With the help of their new friend Roland, Max and Alicia Carver begin to explore the strange circumstances of that death and discover the existence of a mysterious being called the Prince of Mist - a diabolical character who has returned from the shadows to collect on a debt from the past. Soon the three friends find themselves caught up in an adventure of sunken ships and an enchanted stone garden - an adventure that will change their lives forever.” - From The Prince of Mist.
What could have been a really great boy adventure story was lacking in so many areas. To me, it felt like a lot of the story was lost in translation. Carlos Ruiz Zafon is a bestselling Spanish novelist, so I’d like to believe that this is a much better story in its original language. Occasionally, a good story suffers from a poor translation. There were so many instances within the text where I was sure the word used by the translator was absolutely not the word the writer intended. For instance, when Roland shows Max and Alicia his beach hut Max exclaims that he would ‘love to have a house like this,’ and Roland is ‘clearly proud of the impression the hut has made on his friends,’ but at the same time he smiles ’skeptically.’
Still, there didn’t seem to be enough there, there. The mystery begins as soon as the family lands in their new town on page 7 and escalates quickly over a matter of mere days. Though the story is certainly scary at times, there isn’t enough time between the rise and the resolution for tension to build. The relationships follow the same pattern. One day Max meets Roland. The next day, they are the best of friends. The very next, Max introduces Roland to Alicia. And the next, it seems that Alicia and Roland have formed a suddenly inseparable bond. But I, as the reader, didn’t actually feel any of it. Sure my heart was pumping like crazy when Max faced the Prince of Mist at Jacob’s grave, but I didn’t sense the urgency that a reader wants to feel when faced with a seemingly unsolvable mystery. And, when the children finally face the horrifying creature that is the Prince of Mist, I didn’t feel for their safety the way I wanted to. I felt hardly any connection to the narrative and the characters at all.
In college, all of my writing professors repeated one thing, “Show, don’t tell.” The Prince of Mist was definitely all tell and no show. And it suffered for it.
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