The Angel's Game (originally El juego del ángel) is a 2008 novel by late Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafón.
Barcelona during the Second Spanish Republic is not a nice place. Aspiring writer David Martín has to put up with a half-pauper life, product of an abusive childhood under a runaway mom and a Cuba War vet dad that ended up killed on the streets, while slowly climbing his way up mediocre newspapers and seedy publishers. Eventually, with the help of his mentor, millonaire heir dandy and fellow writer Pedro Vidal, Martín makes a name for himself writing pulp-ish grand guignol crime stories under the pseudonym Ignatius B. Samson, and moves to an appropriately creepy old mansion in the romantic part of the city.
However, after being mistreated a bit too much by his greedy publishers, the hypocritical national press and the fickle Vidal- not to mention a brain cancer diagnosis- Martín decides to put an end to everything. It's then that he receives a mysterious offer from a suspiciously Mephistophelian publisher, Andreas Corelli, who seems to have known Martín for a long time. In exchange for rehabilitating his career- and curing his cancer- Corelli makes a seemingly small but strange demand of his new charge: Martín must write him a book that will serve as the basis for a new religion.
The novel, Zafón's second work in the adult genre, serves as a Stealth Prequel of sorts to his previous novel The Shadow of the Wind. Both of them would be later tied together further in a tetralogy of rather loose continuity named The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, of which the next book would be The Prisoner of Heaven in 2011.
This work contains examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation:
- It's implied at several points that Martín is being framed and/or gaslit, either by one or multiple different parties, or maybe just going insane. Because he's narrating the story, though, it's impossible to get an objective perspective. Even taking Martín at his word, textual evidence is inconsistent among all the options. The blood mark Martín finds on his shirt implies he was who beat up the two rapists instead of scaring them away as he remembers (but would a violent beatdown leave such a little blood stain?); Grandes claims that many events in Martín's life didn't happen as he remembers too (but it turns out Grandes is an unreliable source himself); and Martín is later revealed to wear an angel-shaped pin like Corelli's (though again, this is also informed by Grandes and nonetheless has little meaning by itself). When we put all of this together with Marlasca's claim that an evil spirit invaded his body, it's perfectly possible that said spirit, Corelli, has chosen Martín as his new vessel and is warping his mind for his own reasons, maybe just for its twisted, demonic entertainment.
- The next two installments in the tetralogy, which admittedly carry a healthy dose of retcons, support the thesis that Martín was just mentally ill and hallucinated everything, which, depending on the reader's perspective, might or might not be mutually incompatible with Corelli being a demon, especially there is a mention that someone might have saved him from the cops in Corelli's house. However, the short story Prince of Parnasus, if canon, confirms that Corelli is a real supernatural entity.
- Artistic License – Religion:
- As part of his work for Corelli, Martín reads up a ton of religious research and builds theory over his discoveries. However, his conclusions about the supposed similarities between all religions seem to consist basically of extrapolating the history of Abrahamic religions to all faiths in the world and history. Indeed, many of the traits Martín considers universal (messianism, prophethood, divinely inspired laws, full dedication to afterlife, religious exclusivism) aren't found in many religions descending from Indo-European polytheism, as well as many African or Native American tribal religions. A few other traits (stone-set orthodoxy, bureaucratization, crusaderism) have only really applied to very politically organized movements, generally those of the Abrahamic kind again. All of this is ultimately trivial, however, as a politically organized, violent religion is precisely what Corelli is banking on Martín's new religion being.
- Martín claims that reading about religions feels like reading the same crime novel storyline over and over, and concludes "the hundreds of religious beliefs catalogued through the history of the printed letter were all extraordinarily similar". There is some truth on this, as mythology and religion do operate on archetypes and moral consecutions that are roughly common to all humanity, not to mention that many of the creation myths he mentions have a common origin, like those of the Indo-European tree. However, again, Martín heavily overstates those common points, dismissing many uncommon and diverging points.
- Canon Immigrant: Sort of. A vaguely similar character also named Andreas Corelli, already appeared in an in-universe horror story told in Zafón's earlier novel The Watcher in the Shadows (1995). Considering that Zafón enjoys attributing his own novels to fictional characters and playing mind-games with the reader, it further adds a meta-element to the story that all of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series might be books within the Watcher universe.
- Dark Is Not Evil: David Martin writes disturbingly violent and sexual pulp novels, lives in a creepy mansion, doesn't have many friends, and generally puts off an unsettling demeanor. However, he's also kindhearted, empathetic, and tries to do right by the people in his life, even if he ends up accidentally putting them in harm's way.
- Gainax Ending: Years after Martin decides to betray Corelli and flee the city, Corelli tracks him down in a seaside village and forgives him for reneging on their deal, then presents him with a little girl and admonishes him to take care of her. Martin realizes it's the same little girl from Christina's photo album, and that he is the unseen man holding her hand.
- Hijacked by Jesus: Martin broadly applies very specific Abrahamic tenets to all religions. Some of them are generic enough to be plausible, but others are clear allusions to Judaism, Christianity and Islam (and maybe Zoroastrianism, which historically influenced them), and the final conclusion about transcendence goes in the same line as well.
- Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: One of the men brought by Martín to rebuild his house is a bumbling, voracious worker named Otilio, an obvious reference to the comic book character by Francisco Ibáñez of Mortadelo y Filemón fame.
- No Name Given: This book carries on the tradition of only referring to the propietor of Sempere and Son Book Shop as "Sempere," which is initially confusing until it becomes apparent that Martin's friend is Daniel Sempere's grandfather and that the son in this book is Mr. Sempere from The Shadow of the Wind. It's implied that Daniel's father is a Junior, meaning based on the information given in The Labyrinth of Spirits their names would Juan Sempere Sr. and Juan Sempere Jr.
- Our Demons Are Different: Corelli is a strange example of a demon in that even though David sells his soul to him and then burns him on their agreement, Corelli just... lets him go. Their final conversation implies that Corelli has gotten used to humans screwing him over, and now just lets people get away with things because he's become so jaded. Later books in the series indicate that even though David fears Corelli, the two continue to have friendly conversations.
- Self-Abuse: Martín notes twice that Isabella is self-harming in her arms as a consequence of her troubled life, although this is never addressed.
- Series Continuity Error: In The Shadow of the Wind, Daniel's full name was given as Daniel Sempere Martín. This book, whose unrelated protagonist is surnamed Martín himself, reveals Daniel's mother is Isabella Gispert, so his name should have been Daniel Sempere Gispert. This is later retconned in The Labyrinth of Spirits, where he is referred as Sempere Gispert... with the bizarre twist that Martín of all people is his biological father.
