Finally, I have a new review to post!

Since last February, I’ve been counting the days until I could get my hands on a copy of Carlos Ruiz Zaf0n’s young adult novel The Prince of Mist. I got a copy as soon as it hit the bookstores — the first week of May, I think, and read it the very same night. I’ve been meaning to review it for some time now, but work has piled up (again) and I haven’t had the luxury of time for blogging.

Anyway, if you don’t know Carlos Ruiz Zafon, he fast became one of my favorite authors after reading The Shadow of The Wind, the bestselling novel that catapulted him into fame, and earned him the post of Spain’s most widely read contemporary author after Miguel de Cervantes — and Cervantes has had a good five centuries to build up his readership.

Before Zafon wrote SOTW (and its sequel The Angel’s Game), though, he’d already penned several young adult novels, the first of which, “El príncipe de la niebla,” won the Edebé literary prize for young adult fiction in 1993.

And for the first time,  the English translation of this prizewinning young adult novel (imagine, a Spanish bestseller for over a decade!) has been released worldwide as The Prince of Mist.

The Prince of Mist introduces the reader to Max Carver, a nine-year old boy uprooted from his suburban life when his father, a watchmaker, decides to relocate the family to a small coastal town away from the war one fateful summer.

The family moves into an old house with a mysterious past, and attempts to settle into their new life, but strange things start happening: Max discovers a garden plot with grotesque statues of a circus troupe laid out on a six-pointed star; the family uncovers a box of old films belonging to the house’s previous occupants; Max’s older sister Alicia is haunted by disturbing nightmares; while his younger sister Irina hears eerie voices from an old wardrobe.

Max meets a local boy named Roland, who takes him diving in the wreck of a sunken ship, where Max spots the sinister six-pointed star on a tattered flag billowing from the sunken mast.

Max’s curiosity leads him to Roland’s grandfather, the only survivor of the wreck, and the chilling story of the Prince of Mist begins to unfold. Events take a turn for the terrifying as the Prince of Mist returns to collect on an unsettled debt, and Max must save his sister and his friend from the phantom’s wrath.

 

MASTER OF GOTH

While not as indulgently eloquent as Shadow of the Wind, Zafon proves his mastery of the gothic genre with “Prince of Mist,” spinning a spine-tingling horror story that’s also part mystery, adventure, fantasy and romance.

Zafon creates the perfect environment for a ghost story — creaking staircases, broken-down clocks, film noir, a macabre circus, an enchanted garden, a sunken ship, and a lonely lighthouse – and the suspenseful plot spanning several generations will keep both the young and adult reader biting their nails in anticipation.

The titular character, the Prince of Mist, who grants wishes in exchange for souls, is guaranteed to cause more than a few nights of reading under the covers with the flashlight on. For Zafon fans, the Prince of Mist also comes across as a prototype for The Angel’s Game specter Andreas Corelli, who builds young writer David Martin’s career with a provocative proposition worth a hundred thousand francs.

A worthy forerunner to Zafon’s bestsellers, The Prince of Mist, is a dark tale that haunts, enchants, and reminds us all of our own magical summers past.

***

*review first published in Manila Bulletin Students and Campuses Section

The Prince of Mist, trade paperback, 4/5 stars

Book #64 for 2010