The Angel's Game by Zafón

[essentialsaltes]

The Angel's Game is a quasi-prequel to Shadow of the Wind (my lackluster review), though they don't share very much in common apart from some Barcelona locations. I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book, as our young author grows up and gets involved with a Mephistophelean benefactor who commissions a work. He is bedeviled not only by his employer, but also by a mystery in the past and obsessions in the present. The plot comes with a bonus doomed love affair.
Unfortunately, the final third doesn't live up to beginning, and edges too close to magic realism simply for the sake of magic realism, rather than as a technique to reach an artistic end.