Shortly after finishing The Shadow Of The Wind, I received the second novel from the series.

David Martin. A boy that becomes a man too soon, due to some tragic events. He starts working for a living at a small age and for a low wage, constantly pressured by his condition and his dark past. What he doesn’t know is that the future is even darker, maybe too dark, if you ask me.

The novel resembles “The Shadow Of The Wind” in many ways. The main character comes from a simple family, raised only by his father, a veteran who spent too much time along with the dead that he cannot find its way between the living. David (as well as Daniel Sempere) is led by the events in strange situations and seems to repeat the same mistakes of a mysterious character from the past (character that is presumed dead in the beginning, due to some alleged tragedy). You take that and you add Barceló, Isaac (which is a bit more cheerful), Sempere & Son book shop, the “Cemetery Of Forgotten Books” and, of course, the city of Barcelona (which seems a bit less creepy than in the first novel of the series) and you’ll start to agree with me.

Moving away from the similarities in the flow of the story and narrative techniques, The Angel’s Game brings at the table a religious theme (you could have guessed from the title) which is inserted using different inexplainable events (or they imply a religious explanation) generated by THE bad character of the novel.

Now, now, I don’t want to spoil your lecture of this book, because it is indeed a thrilling novel! It’s just I think it’s a bit disappointing, especially because it misses a “happy end”, or at least a real “happy end”.