YMMV / The Angel's Game

• Even Better Sequel: Universally considered superior to The Shadow of the Wind, either as this or as a Surprisingly Improved Sequel for those who didn't entirely like it. There are people that even consider it Zafón's finest adult novel, period.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: As in the previous book, this novel placed high in Kodansha's Bunko Translation Mystery Best 10 in Japan, only falling to second place where The Shadow of the Wind had reached the first.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This novel, whose protagonist is hired to create a religion, was translated into English by Lucia Graves, the daughter of famous comparative religion scholar Robert Graves, who was accused precisely of making things up in some of his main works.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A novel about a tormented writer trying to invent a new religion would have been a great opportunity to explore comparative mythology, among other things, but it' easy to feel Zafón declined to review such things and only opted to make a flowery criticism of Abrahamic religions pass as a commentary on all religions in the world.